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A HISTORY OF THE NOVEL 
PREVIOUS TO THE 

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 



BY 

F. M. WARREN 

Professor in Adelbert College of Western Reserve University 





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NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1895 



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Copyright, 1895, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT & CO. 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



";- 



I 



TO 

A. MARSHALL ELLIOTT, 

PROFESSOR IN 

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, 

IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF ENCOURAGEMENT 

AND EXAMPLE. 



PREFACE. 



The idea of writing a general treatise on the early 
novel was suggested to me by Korting's History of the 
French Novel in the Seventeenth Century. It is hoped that 
the following chapters may serve as an introduction to 
that work, and also prove to be, in some measure, an end 
in themselves. My method in studying into the begin- 
nings of the various kinds of novels was derived from 
Rohde's History of the Greek Novel. This book also fur- 
nished the material for the two chapters on Alexandrian 
fiction, though the theories regarding the development of 
the Greek romance are not those advanced by Rohde. In 
the place of a full bibliography of the subject, a few refer- 
ences to leading authorities are appended to the text in 
the form of notes, under the chapters to which they belong. 
Occasional citations of more special articles supplement 
these references, to assist those who may desire to work 
up the matter from their own standpoint. 

F. M. Warren. 

Cleveland, November 22, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGES 

Introduction. 

History of the terms story, romance, novel. Meaning of romance 
in the Middle Ages. The Arthurian romances. The romans 
d'aventure. Formation of the novel. Amadis of Gaul. Its 
plan and sentiment. Definition of the word novel. Its essen- 
tials. Romances of chivalry. The Greek novel of the Alex- 
andrian era. The Spanish novel of the Renaissance. Italian, 
French, and English- novels in the sixteenth century. Chinese 
novels. The French novel in the seventeenth century. The 
English of the eighteenth. Romantic and realistic novels in 
the nineteenth century 1-20 



CHAPTER II. 

The Greek Novel. Its Origin and Development. 

The Homeric epic. Hellenistic literature. The Nimrod fragment. 
Aristocratic in tone. Its likeness to Amadis of Gaul. Its 
author a Sophist. The Alexandrian rhetoricians. Political, 
intellectual, and social changes. The later Greek novel, plebeian 
in sentiment. Narrative of Antonius Diogenes. Is it a parody ? 
It contains novelistic elements. Its construction. Mixture of 
love and adventure. The erotic element in Greek literature. 
The national delight in adventures. Influence of woman on 
the novelists. Lack of inherent springs of action for the 
story 21-46 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

PAGES 

The Greek Novel. Authors and Works. 

Novels of erotic adventure. Jamblichus' Babylonica. Xenophon's 
Ephesiaca. Apollonius of Tyre. Its influence in the Middle 
Ages. Heliodorus' Theagenes and Chariclea. Its reasonable plot 
and skillful handling. Achilles Tatius' Clitophon and Leucippe. 
Traces in it of euphuism. Its influence at the Renaissance. 
Chariton's Char eas and Callirrhoe. Half-historical in incidents. 
The pastoral novel the outgrowth of love for nature combined 
with social and mental discontent. Daphnis and Chloe. Its 
idea of nature. Sophist authorship. Decline of the Sophists 
and the Greek novel. Pious transformation of fiction. The 
Byzantine renaissance and its novels. Eustathius' Hysmenias 
and Hysmene. Influence of the Greek novel on the mediaeval 
literature of France. Boccaccio's indebtedness to it. Amyot's 
translations in the sixteenth century 47-8 1 

CHAPTER IV. 
Origins of the Romances of Chivalry. 

Indigenous growth of the modern novel. Its first manifestation 
the romances of chivalry. Their tone aristocratic. Lack of 
originality in mediaeval literature. The erotic element in early 
French literature gave the romances of chivalry their plot. 
The romance or chanson d'histoire. The lai, Guigemar, by Marie 
de France. Expansions of erotic themes and additions to them 
after the analogy of the heroic epic poetry. Gautier of Arras' 
romans d' aventure. Guillaume de Palerme. Giiillaume deDole. 
La Chatelaine de Vergi. The Arthurian legends. Chretien of 
Troyes. His Twain. Novelistic elements common to Twain 
and Amadis of Gatd. Spanish and Portuguese liking for the 
Round Table. Contributions to the early novel from the Caro- 
lingian epic. Effect on fiction of the contact with the East. I 
Meeting of the various traditions in Huon de Bordeaux. Poems 
whose events were placed in Spain. The Entree de Spagne. 
Fierabras. Situations common to the heroic French epic and 
the romances of chivalry. The element of magic and the super- 
natural. Renaud de Montauban. Maugis d' Aigremont. A 
possible French romance of chivalry in Perce forest. . 82-121 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER V. 

PAGES 

Spirit of the Romances of Chivalry. Amadis of Gaul. 

Repetition the characteristic of mediaeval literature. French in- 
fluence in Spain and Portugal. Spanish ballad poetry. Didactic 
bent of the romances of chivalry. Amadis the model knight. 
His foils. Fidelity in love in the stories of the Middle Ages. 
Aristocratic tone and religious zeal of the romances of chivalry. 
Survival of feudal usages and the crusading spirit in the Spanish 
peninsula. Beginnings of Amadis in Portugal. Joao Lobeira. 
Court of King Diniz. A romance its probable embryo. Min- 
gling of traditions. Amadis in the fourteenth century. Its final 
revision by Montalvo. Analysis of the first book of Amadis. 
Description of a combat. Courtly conversations. Spirit and 
content of Amadis. Its loans from antecedent literature. Its 
moralizings and realism. Analysis and characteristics of the 
second book. Novelties of the third book. The fourth book. 
Its speeches. Probable first form of the plot of Amadis. In- 
fluence of the Renaissance on its style and construction. 122-162 



CHAPTER VI. 

Sequels to Amadis of Gaul. The Palmerins, Etc. 

Montalvo's Esplandian, the fifth book. Unreal incidents. Further 
^_ sequels. Don Flo?'isando. Lisuarte de Grecia. Amadis de 
Grecia. Florisel de Niquea. Significance of a pastoral episode 
in Florisel. Des Essarts' rendering of the Spanish Amadis. 
Original sequels in French. Amadis in Italy, England, and 
Germany. Tirante the White, a parody of Amadis anticipating 
Don Quixote. Its realism. National spirit of Spain favorable 
to the romances. Amadis imitated in the Palmerin dynasty. 
Palmerin de Oliva. No traditional background for the new 
series. Primaleon. Platir. Flotir. Moraes and his Palmerin 
of England. Its plan and composition. Its animus. Its 
haughty heroines the future type. Description of combat. 
Courtly conversations. Its tendency toward the historical novel. 
Its defects. Sequels to Palmerin of England and translations 
of it. Decline of the romance of chivalry. The reasons for it. 
Many independent romances. Don Belianis de Grecia. At- 



CONTENTS. 

PAGES 

tempt of the Church to appropriate the romances. The pious 
Lepolemo. Its worldly sequel Leandro el Bel. The allegorical 
Caballeria Celestial 163-199 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Italian Pastoral, Narrative and Dramatic. 

Sentiment of pastoral composition in antiquity and at the Renais- 
sance. Development of the pastoral in mediaeval Italy. Pas- 
tourelles in France. Virgil the source of the narrative pastoral. 
Disguised characters its principal feature. The dramatic pas- 
toral resembles Greek elegiac poetry. Its appearance at the 
Renaissance. The discouragement and satire of its tone. His- 
tory of the narrative pastoral. Theocritus. Virgil. Its alle- 
gorical form under the influence of the mediaeval Churchmen. 
Dante reverts to the Virgilian tradition. Is followed by 
Petrarch. Boccaccio's Ameto. Comparison of it with the Vita 
Nuova and the Decameron. Influence of the Aineid. The 
theory of art for art. The Age of Gold under the Medici. 
Sannazaro's Arcadia. Its tone and style. Novelistic elements 
in it. Its influence. The dramatic pastoral. Boccaccio's 
Ninfale Fiesolano. Its origin and idea. Poliziano's Orfeo. 
Musical dramas at Ferrara. Tasso's Aminta. Its material 
and construction. Frigidity of its heroine. Guarini's Pastor 
Fido. Its sentiment aud composition. The Italian pastoral in 
France. Nicolas de Montreux 200-236 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Origin of the Spanish Pastoral Novel. 

Indigenous or foreign ? The sources of the material of the Spanish 
pastoral. The pastourelle in mediaeval Portugal. Liturgical 
drama in Spain. The auto. Secular pastorals. Mingo 
Revulgo. Juan de la Encina. Virgil's influence. Garcilaso de 
la Vega. Spanish coloring in his poems. Their characteristics 
and influence on poetry and the drama. Sa de Miranda's Story 
of the Mondego. Its love of nature. Ribeiro. Source of his 
inspiration. His eclogues. Menina e Moca. Disguised char- 



CONTENTS. xi 

PAGES 

acters. Its sequel a romance of chivalry. Traits of the Span- 
ish pastoral. Its supporters 237-258 



CHAPTER IX. 

Montemayor's Diana, Its Sequels and Successors. 

Surroundings of the Diana. Analysis of the novel. Story of Jarifa 
and Abindarraez. Style and tone of the Diana. Its sentimen- 
tality. Its courtly conversations. Influence in Spain. Sequels 
by Perez and Polo. Successors mentioned in Don Quixote. 
Cervantes' Galatea. Lope de Vega's Arcadia. Revival of the 
pastoral toward 1600. Lobo's Primavera. Artificiality of the 
pastoral made its career a short one. Influence of the Diana 
on French thought and literature. Comparison of the modern 
pastoral with Daphnis and Chloe. The sentimentality of the 
Diana revived, through the AstrJe, by Rousseau. . 259-283 

CHAPTER X. 

The Picaresco Novel in Spain. Its Origin and 
Early Career. 

Reasons for realism in fiction. Nature of the Spanish picaresco 
novel. Its supporters. Satire its origin. Parody of the 
romances of chivalry. Spain at the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. Decay of feudalism. ClasG distinctions obscured by 
foreign conquests. Decline of agriculture hastened by increase 
in taxes. Security of person impaired by the Inquisition. Pica- 
resco novels a symptom of social unrest. The matter of Laza- 
rillo de Tormes. The French faice. Le Garcon et V Aveugle. 
Other traces of a boy and beggar cycle of plays. Analysis of 
Lazarillo de Tormes. How it differs from the modern realistic 
novel. Fantastic sequel to Lazarillo. Influence of the novel 
in Spain. No other appeared for nearly fifty years. Majeo 
Aleman. Analysis of his Guzman de Alfarache. How it differs 
from Lazarillo de Tormes. Marti's sequel to the first part of 
Guzman. Aleman's genuine sequel. Popularity of both parts 
at home and abroad. Influence of the picaresco novel in 
France and on Le Sage. ...... 284-322 



Xll CONTENTS. 

PAGES 

CHAPTER XL 

Other Kinds of Spanish Novels. English Novels. 
Chinese Novels. 

Further attempts at novel-writing in Spain. The Question de Amor, 
a society novel. Contreras' novel of travel. Hita's historical 
romance. The Civil Wars of Granada. Analysis of its first 
part. Imitated in France by Mile, de Scudery and Mme. de La 
Fayette. Its second part mainly a chronicle. Poverty of fiction 
elsewhere in the sixteenth century. Italy. France. The Ger- 
manic nations. Some activity in England. Lyly. Sydney's 
Arcadia. Lodge. Picaresco tales. Chettle. Nash's Jack 
Walton. How his rascal differs from the Spanish picaro. 
The Confucian novel of China, historical and romantic. Char- 
acteristics. The Fortunate Union. The Two Educated Girls. 
Their constituent elements. Their ultimate origin perhaps in 
the drama. ........ 323-348 

Notes 349~353 

Index 355-3 6 i 



A HISTORY OF THE NOVEL PREVIOUS 
TO THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

The difficulty in gaining a hearing for a treatise on the 
novel is apparent at the very start. It is a branch of 
literature which has become the most popular in depth and 
breadth, including all classes of writers and readers. Con- 
sequently any endeavor to put its history on a scientific 
basis would excite more general criticism than could be- 
fall any other kind of composition. Drama, poetry, letters, 
essays have been long considered legitimate objects of re- 
search, and more recently folk-lore and fiction have re- 
ceived serious attention. But the novel, or the story, or 
the romance, or whatever other results an analysis of the 
mass of fiction might give, would either be too trivial to be 
studied apart from one another, or too closely intertwined 
to render such a study profitable. 

Yet at the present day the novel is fully recognized as 
an independent species of fiction and has finally received 
the name by which it is to be known. ) ; No one any longer, 
though a conservative lexicographer, fails to distinguish the 
novel from the story — possibly also from the romance, 
though doubts exist on this latter head. Such distinction, 
however, is not old. Our grandfathers had not formulated 
it apparently, or if they had their ancestors of the second 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

generation surely had not. Novels they wrote, and they 
read what we call novels, but they used varied and uncer- 
tain terms for our precise and single one. Hence confu- 
sion in following out the species, and an unwillingness on 
the part of writers to discuss it by itself. For should we 
go back but a century in the history of literature and seek 
to classify the lighter reading of our forefathers, we find 
that the names now accepted are no longer guides, that 
story and romance are interchangeable terms, while the word 
novel rarely appears. 

This statement applies more fittingly to English litera- 
ture than it does to the fiction of any other people, be- 
cause novels came into it later than they did elsewhere, and 
even then rather as imitations or exotics. The same thing 
is true also of Germany. But the writers of the Renais- 
sance in southern Europe were perfectly well aware of the 
difference between the romances, the stories, and the novels 
of their age, though, as all such compositions were unworthy 
of the consideration of educated men, they did not bother 
themselves about establishing formally the boundaries be- 
tween them. These were merely the pastimes of their 
leisure hours, and were treated as such. And yet the pedi- 
gree of even the English novel of the nineteenth century 
can be traced without any fear of serious mistakes back 
to its progenitors of the fifteenth and sixteenth. During 
these dozen generations or more the characteristics and 
outlines of this particular kind of writing have remained 
practically the same, and can therefore be plainly recog- 
nized at any moment of its intermediate career ; while the 
inherited resemblance points unmistakably back to the first 
of the race, the offspring of mediaeval fancy. 

Since this assertion, if not new, is at least unusual, it 
behooves its supporter to advance a few proofs that it 
rests, both in theory and in practice, on a solid foundation, 
and that the history of literature vouches for its correctness. 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

To reach this state of assurance, or more properly to lead 
others to it, a few definitions are necessary. 
/ In the first place the term fiction is obvious in its appli- 
cation. It means what is not true, what is feigned. Ro- 
mances, tales, novels, are fiction) So are poetry and drama, 
and every kind of writing which is not the statement or 
elucidation of a mental or material fact. But we distin- 
guish poetry from drama, even when the latter is in verse, 
and mankind has always done so. In the same way these 
departments of literature have always been held separate 
from the less aspiring kinds of fiction, and have never been 
confused with romances or stories. And so to-day, when 
we say story, we do not mean romance, any more than when 
we speak of romances we allude entirely to novels. There- 
fore there must be some difference between these words, 
else they would not be employed in different senses in 
intelligent social circles. 

Consequently for one who undertakes to study the novel 
ft is imperative to determine at the outset what a novel is, 
and how it differs from the other kinds of fiction. Having 
first satisfied himself on this essential point, he must then 
be able to present a reasonable exposition of his views and 
demonstrate their soundness. But there is always this 
caution to be borne in mind, there where the forces of 
nature are at work, either in the evolution of an organism 
or in the expression of thought: in the process of evolu- 
tion there is always a point where the separate forms are 
blended — however far apart may be their general contour — 
and the line of demarcation cannot be traced with rigid 
scientific accuracy between the one and the other. French 
and Provencal are two distinct idioms, yet no student of 
the Latin dialects can say, without many reservations, where 
on the soil of France Provencal ceases and French begins. 
No more can we put our finger on the exact spot where the 
romance, the story, and the novel diverge. 



1 1 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

If we leave aside for the moment the fiction of antiquity, 
and consider the fiction which belongs to modern times, 
we can trace it in a very clear and continuous line of 
descent back to the stories of the Middle Ages. Now, in 
the Middle Ages the word romance was coined as well as 
the term novel. The former of these two expressions was 
the earlier, and may boast indeed of remote lineage. It 
was, in a certain sense, a general term, and was used to in- 
dicate a division in literature which is not particularly 
flattering to our national pride. For as all the serious 
works of mediaeval times were written in the only respect- 
able language of those times, in Latin, so the mass of the 
frivolous, popular, and national literature was expressed in 
the vernacular of the particular race which produced it. 
But the Latin races, and especially the Provencal and 
French, were the first to write extensively in the new 
tongues, and with a due acknowledgment of their linguis- 
tic inheritance from Rome, they called the ballads of the 
Troubadours and the epic songs of the Northern minstrels 
productions of the Roman tongue — of the lingua romana, to 
speak more learnedly. And afterward they gave to the poem 
itself — for prose came much later — the name of romans, a 
term which we have borrowed in our English romance. 

Thus the first literary utterings of the modern speech 
were romances, and were known to their authors and hearers 
by that title. For some generations they continued to be 
in verse, so far as the manuscripts show in which they are 
preserved. But toward the end of the twelfth century the 
trade of the singers, who alone knew them, and who re- 
cited them to the people and the nobles, began to decline 
in dignity, while together with this passing away of a pro- 
fession the art of reading became fashionable among the 
wealthier classes of society. In order to meet this change 
in taste there arose a new race of literary hacks — though 
it must be said in their praise that some of them were by no 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

means ignorant of the elements of style — who turned the 
exploits of Charlemagne and his paladins, of Arthur and 
the knights of the Round Table, from poetical form into 
long narratives in prose. Once released from the restraints 
of rhyme, these story-tellers expanded and modified their 
traditional material according to the endowments of their 
own individual talents. To their prose versions of the 
mediaeval epics descended the name romatice, as a matter 
of course. Under that title they were made known to the 
admiring peoples of western Europe, and supplanted in 
popular favor their plainer poetical forerunners. In this 
way the term romance became fixed in general parlance, 
and down to the present day we speak of the " Arthurian 
romances " as a definite section of prose literature, while 
employing the epithet " metrical " to designate the stories 
of the cycle which remained in verse. 

Still the prose romances were not novels, nor does the 
past history of the word novel aid us in discerning its pres- 
ent meaning ; for its first appearance as a designator of 
prose fiction was in Italy in the last quarter of the thirteenth 
century, when it meant what it does now in Italy, Spain, 
France, or Germany (novelet, nouvelle, novelle). In England 
alone has its signification been extended in these six centuries 
from the title of a tale or story to the name of a much longer 
prose narrative. But this in comparatively recent years; for 
though Richardson is often called the " Father of the Eng- 
lish Novel," neither he nor Fielding ever speak of their 
productions under any other title than that of " Histories," 
while the dictionaries for several decades into the nine- 
teenth century still defined the word according to its orig- 
inal meaning of tale or story. Thus all past historical aid 
fails us, and we are obliged to define the subject of our 
study after the conceptions which exist to-day, and to dis- 
tinguish the novel from its fellows of fiction by the stand- 
ards which custom at present authorizes. 



6 IN TR OD UC TION. 

To return to our mediaeval romance which knew itself, 
and took its father's name. It was very similar to our 
views of a novel. It was in prose, was a narrative, and 
fictitious in subject ; though, in order to interest its readers, 
it laid claim to the realities of life, and offered to support 
its claim by documentary evidence in quantity sufficient to 
satisfy the most ardent naturalist of the latest school. An 
analysis of one of the kind, as Lancelot or The Holy Grail, 
reveals a series of episodes and adventures which are 
either ascribed to one man, and therefore form a kind of 
biography, or else cluster around some central idea. A 
narrative made up of such material may be said to have a 
certain degree of connectedness, and perhaps something 
which approaches unity of action. Yet if we look more 
closely into the separate deeds, and their setting, we see 
that they are not at all peculiar to the hero they laud for 
the moment, but by a mere substitution of names they can 
be applied to almost any knight of the Round Table. 
On the other hand, the loss of many of the episodes would 
in no way affect the action of the narrative in which they 
appear. 

So true to fact are both of these remarks that, with the 
exception of Lancelot's love for Guinevere, and Tristan's 
for Iseult, you can find hardly a distinguishing essential 
characteristic in the whole range of the Breton adventures. 
All is indefinite, conventional, and in no way calculated to 
satisfy our notion of a novel. For this reason we have 
abandoned to them their chosen name, romance, and confess 
to ourselves that between them and the modern novel there 
is a difference which touches the quality of the work, its 
plan and its development. 

As is well understood to-day, the Arthurian prose 
romances are the fountain head of the modern novel. 
They supplied its substance, as well as set it a model of prose 
composition. They did not, however, furnish it with the 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

vital spirit, without which it would never have been created. 
This shaping force came from another kind of mediaeval 
literature, and is more directly due to the honest minstrels 
of France and to their powers of invention than has been 
generally acknowledged. For from them and their songs 
the novel received its idea of construction and plot. The 
particular kind of poetry in which their talents were exer- 
cised was very much in favor during the Middle Ages, with 
both French and Provencal writers, and but for the one 
shortcoming of being in verse instead of prose it would 
easily satisfy all of our modern requirements for a novel. 
This kind flourished particularly in the last half of the 
twelfth century, and during the thirteenth, and received 
from students of mediaeval literature the name of ro?nan 
d'aventure. The title reveals the content. It is almost 
superfluous to add that the plot of these romans, often 
cleverly constructed, was the mutual affection of knight and 
lady. Their heroes and heroines comported themselves 
like lovers of the present day, and set a worthy, if useless, 
example of fidelity to the forgetful swains of Arthur's 
household. The surroundings in which their themes were 
developed were those of both court and private life, and 
the glimpses which they afford of contemporary manners 
and sentiments add not a little to their lasting success. 
Of all the kinds of mediaeval romancing, the romans 
d'aventure remain the most attractive to readers of all 
epochs in history, for they are natural and describe human 
emotions. 

/From the prose stories of the Round Table, then, and 
from these poetical accounts in the romans d'aventure of 
refined life in the Middle Ages, came the first novel of 
modern times. r Bhe one furnished form and incidents, the 
other subject and inspiration. When the gifts were made, 
how the two styles were fused, and by whom, we have no 

means of knowing. For it was accomplished among the 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

people, in that stratum of folk legends and traditions which 
ever underlies the more assuming growth of literary works. 
And it was undoubtedly a very slow process, a gradual ex- 
pansion of a simple stor)?" of love in castle walls through 
the addition of details and the insertion of adventures chosen 
from the favorite chapbooks of the Middle Ages. Two 
centuries at least must have been consumed by the evolu- 
tion ; two centuries of humble tales by the fireside,. cheer- 
ing the hard toil of husbandman and shepherd with the 
pictures of chivalry and royal splendor. 

The people gladly eulogized the nobility, for it had no 
thought of aspiring to the noble's seat. And when the 
romancers of the crowd had elaborated the praises of the 
aristocracy to the satisfaction of their clients, authors of 
higher lineage and better literary training continued their 
works, refined the crudities of their narratives, diluted the 
adventures they contained, added others foreign to tradition, 
and adapted the whole to the taste of a more exacting public. 
And so the Romance of Chivalry was born into literature. 

The name of this universal legatee to the popular fiction 
of the Middle Ages was Amadis of Gaul, and the date of 
its appearance as a literary product the last half of the 
fifteenth century. By that time the formative process was 
completed and the kind had been fixed. As is the fate with 
all beginners, the rude ancestors of this courtly knight were 
entirely eclipsed by his greatness. They survived only in 
rare allusions in the lighter poetry and chronicles of the 
centuries preceding. Of their career and origins, the 
families out of which they sprung, and the manner in which 
they grew, we can learn only from the faint traces which 
still remain of them in the purified features of their de- 
scendant. So, roughly speaking, in the printed Amadis of 
Gaul there is an evident amalgamation, or fusion, of the 
Arthurian legends with a roman d'aventure. From a series of 
such episodes as composed the epic prose romances, joined 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

together at random and rarely connected intrinsically with 
the hero or the enterprise they professed to celebrate, the 
mediaeval tradition reappears mAmadis of Gaul as one story 
fairly well put together, consonant in its several parts, and 
arriving at a definite conclusion. Adventures-at-arms still 
occupy by far the greater amount of the space of the book, 
but the adventures had now some motive, some end to 
serve, and it is this motive which brings in the individual 
adventure, fashions it, decides its nature, and conducts it 
to some logical conclusion. 

The motive, thus powerful in its action, is love. Out of 
love for his mistress the knight goes from her presence to 
win fame for her whose servant he is. And by the fame 
which thus redounds to her, he hopes to attract to himself 
her gratitude and her affection. For her sake he takes 
part in tournaments, fights giants, rescues maidens, befriends 
the oppressed, destroys the arts of magic, and captures the 
strongholds of the wicked. And should his lady receive 
his "homage unwillingly, or manifest displeasure at his 
victories, the conquering hero dares not affront her glance. 
No solace has he remaining. Deeds of valor are but 
vanity, and the applause of all Christendom empty noise. 
He abandons to the admiring world his name and glory, 
and far away on desert shores he mortifies the flesh in 
melancholy gloom, until there reaches his ears the tidings 
of his pardon, and he may take again his sword from the 
willow and his armor from the altar and return to her feet, 
once more her invincible champion. 

In other words, the presence of this motive for all the 
the deeds recounted, the motive which guides the entire 
story and crowns its end, makes a plot. And a plot makes 
of a prose narrative, such as the epic romances are, a novel. 
Amadis of Gaul y the first epic romance which contains 
a plot, is therefore our first modern novel. It is this plot 
which constitutes the essential difference between the 



io INTRODUCTION'. 

romances of chivalry and their ancestors, the Arthurian 
romances. To their union with the Breton tales the rowans 
d'aventure had brought the plot, as their dowry. 

It is not to be supposed, however, from the emphasis 
with which this definition of a novel has been given, that 
the boundary line between the romance of the Middle Ages 
and the novel of the Renaissance is so distinct as to be 
clear at each and every point. Literature, as the expres- 
sion of thought, must obey the laws which regulate all 
living organisms. When subject only to natural processes 
of development, and unobstructed by absolute, arbitrary 
rules, its various kinds proceed from one another and pass 
away into one another. So the romance which preceded 
the novel developed by slow stages into the novel, and at 
a certain period of this evolution you cannot say whether 
the story under your eyes is a romance or a novel. Abstract 
definitions, which under certain conditions should perform 
for us the same office that his stakes do to a surveyor, and 
should have no other object than to give us our bearings, 
apply to completed processes alone. 

Having this truism in mind, there is no occasion for sur- 
prise at the discovery that we have defined not only the word 
novel, but the term story as well. To be sure, it is possible 
that a story may also be in verse, though the present tech- 
nical application of the word would seem to exclude poet- 
ical narrative. But there is, in fact, no difference in quality 
between the prose story and the novel. It is merely a dif- 
ference in size, the novel being the larger. Other lan- 
guages have differentiated between the story and the novel 
very much as the English has done. In the Latin countries 
the word for both novel and romance is still the same 
(roman, etc.), while the word for story has its own title 
(nove/a, etc.), to which English-speaking peoples have now 
given a wider signification. Consequently the assertion that 
the difference between novel and story is one of quantity 



IN TROD UCTION. 1 1 

seems to be borne out both by current use elsewhere and by 
their etymology, with this concession, that the size requisite 
to a novel is evidently not to be determined by the number 
of pages it contains. The possibilities of its plot, and the 
degree to which its episodes might be reasonably expanded, 
appear to have some weight in the decision. For instance, 
the first realistic novel of modern times, the Spanish 
Lazarillo de Tonnes, is much shorter than many of the self- 
confessed stories of its own century. And yet it has held 
its place in the category of novels, possibly on account of 
its significance in the history of fiction, but also perhaps 
because it is so greatly condensed. Still, in general, we 
are quite safe in assuming that a novel is a story of a larger 
growth. 

Now there is another point which follows the one already 
made in this discussion. It follows much in the same way 
as a corollary follows a proposition in geometry. The 
proposition was that a novel is a fictitious prose narrative 
which contains a plot. The corollary is that a narrative 
having these essential features is a novel, whether the scenes 
it describes and the characters who appear therein are real 
or imaginary. Of course, if the novelist wishes to hold the 
attention of his public he must himself mentally share in 
the life which he pretends to picture. And if he does not 
choose to relate events, present or past, which really 
happen, he is bound at least to give to his incidents an air 
of probability. For no one will continue to delight in 
deeds and careers which are obtrusively false. 

The essential thing, therefore, to be obtained by the 
novelist is that the reading public of his own day be led to 
admit that his story is possible. Whether to-morrow's 
reader believe in it or not, is not necessary to his pur- 
pose, though highly desirable for his lasting reputation. 
As a case in point, no member of this present intellectual 
generation can force himself to put the least credence in 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

the events narrated by the romances of chivalry. Yet the 
mass of Spaniards in the sixteenth century not only gave 
them an existence in fancy, but even an existence in fact, 
and the immortal parody on them, by which Cervantes 
endeavored to destroy this belief, remains to-day a monu- 
ment to the credulity of mankind. He put into current 
life the supposed actions of the old knight-errantry, and 
employed the entire range of his talents to demonstrate 
their absurdity. The pastoral dramas and novels of the 
Renaissance could also lay claim to numerous dupes in the 
world of affairs, and many an unfortunate lover and cruel 
mistress patterned their despair and disdain after their 
illustrious predecessors of Arcadia, or the shepherds in the 
less distant valleys of the Tagus and Lignon. Even 
allegories can be so constructed that their types may 
become to us living characters, and the experience of the 
soul take on as much appearance of reality as the vicissi- 
tudes of our physical existence. It is hardly necessary to 
recall in this connection Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 

The nature of the novel, as distinct from other prose 
fiction, having been thus assumedly established, the time 
has come to enter upon a second plane of meditation, and 
consider the place of the novel in the literature of the 
various peoples which have given it birth. It has been seen 
in the foregoing sketch of the development of the modern 
novel, that it came later than epic, lyric, or narrative 
poetry, and also later than the drama — at least the drama 
of the period to which it really belonged. For the romance 
of chivalry is purely mediaeval in its matter and soul, and 
its plot and substance were derived from the literature of 
the period immediately preceding it. Consequently it is 
safe to say that in its first manifestation and form the novel 
belongs to imitative literature, and not to inventive. 

When the time had come for the transformation of 
mediaeval epic poetry into prose fiction, the society of the 



IN TROD UC TIOJST. 1 3 

Middle Ages was entering upon another phase of being. 
The years which witnessed the appearance of the prose 
Arthurian romance — toward the beginning of the thirteenth 
century — were those which looked upon the rise of the 
communes also. But the epic poems on Charlemagne's 
paladins and the knights of the Round Table had been 
composed on the one hand for the amusement of baronial 
feasts and princely assemblies, and on the other for the 
delectation of the crowd in the village market-places, or 
of the gatherings at the country cross-roads. They were 
made to be sung, or recited. Consequently when they 
were worked over into prose, the public for which they 
were intended must have been an entirely different one. 
It was a public of readers, and in these good old times the 
majority of laymen who knew their letters pertained neither 
to the nobility nor the common people, but to the trading 
classes, the third estate. So in their new form the epic 
romances fell in the social scale, and became rather the 
pastime of plebeians. 

Yet this substitution of one body of supporters for 
another in no way affected the aristocratic tone of the 
prose romances. The national songs of France, which had 
their origin in the camps of the Frankish warriors and 
which were fostered by ail the traditions of chivalry, found 
refuge among the commoners when the lords had tired of 
them, and had driven from their halls the minstrels who 
still cherished them. The Celtic legends, which were not of 
French birth, but which were carried to the French by 
wandering bards, attracted at first the notice of a new race 
of court poets, better endowed than the minstrels who 
had laid claim to the heroic epic. These versifiers were 
rewarded by Louis VII. and the great vassals of his crown. 
By them the scattered lays of the Breton singers were 
joined together into more ambitious poems and dedicated 
to royal patrons ; and when these poems in their turn were 



1 4 IN TROD UCTION. 

made over into prose, they still retained unimpaired their 
ideals of high-born sentiments and actions. 

It is to this last class of epic literature, the Breton stories, 
that the romances of chivalry are so closely related. The 
most striking thing about the circumstances of their com- 
position as poems was that they were, with rare exceptions, 
written at the command of princesses. The romans (Taven- 
ture coincide with the Breton tales in this respect, being 
also dedicated to the noble ladies of England and of 
France. Now, the theme of both these kinds of poetry 
was love and gallantry, and the stories which celebrated 
the power of love were the first to find their way into prose. 
By the middle of the thirteenth century all the important 
poems on Arthur and his knights had passed into their 
present form of romances, while the epics on Charlemagne 
and his warlike followers did not undergo this transforma- 
tion until full two centuries later, on the eve of the com- 
mercial reign of Louis XI. The songs of war and vio- 
lence were the peculiar property of men. The lays of love 
and chivalry waited on the pleasure of women. Fortified 
by these facts, it may not seem too hazardous to conclude 
that we owe to women the beginnings of the modern novel. 

Having these antecedents, tendencies, and patronesses, 
the stories of chivalry found themselves prepared for a 
new period of existence, and the history of their develop- 
ment, though often obscure in point of authors and dates, 
lies near enough to the modern student of literature to 
furnish sufficient proofs for the theories which may be 
formed concerning them. But this is not the case when 
we turn to the novel of antiquity, the one which flourished 
on African and Asiatic soil in the last epoch of Hellenic 
literature. Here no references in contemporary writers 
testify to its origin or popularity. Stories of love and 
adventure were too trivial to win a place in the works of 
serious authors, even by mention and in passing, and we 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

have no landmarks to show the road which was followed by 
the romances of Syrian or Alexandrian narrators. They 
appear to us only in their final form. Theoretically, it is 
probable that the evolution of the Greek novel was the 
same as the growth of its Romance sister. Epic poems 
passed into epic prose when the Greek traders drove from 
their kingdoms the monarchs of Argos and Mycenae, with 
their retinue of minstrels. But in their new dress they 
retained the characteristics of the old one, and celebrated 
still the deeds of Homeric heroes, or their kin, and the 
loves of a Hector and an Andromache. Yet of these prose 
narratives, did such exist, there is to-day no sign. One 
fragment only of a story, aristocratic in tone, whose sur- 
roundings are those of noble life, survives the disdain of 
poet and historian. And this fragment deals partly with 
historical characters. All the other novels of the Greeks 
are persistently plebeian (unless Theagenes and Chariclea be 
an exception), and their action is carried on in the midst of 
merchants and mariners. Between them and the Iliad or 
Odyssey were no less than seven centuries of intense mental 
effort, while between Tristran and Amadis of Gaul there is 
a time interval of but three hundred years, years in a period 
of the world's history notorious for its intellectual inertia 
and lack of originality. 

So we may lay down as we please the laws for the evolu- 
tion of the novel from the epic song, and conceive that 
there was in ancient Greece a whole series of gradations 
through prose romances, in favor with the people, aristo- 
cratic in sentiment, traditional or historical in subject, until 
the era of purely bourgeois compositions was reached, the end 
of the literary creations of the nation. For from its folk-lore 
and mythology the genius of the Greek race had developed 
the larger part of the Homeric epic and the drama of an 
^Eschylus. A flowering of lyric verse accompanied the 
evolution of the stage. Then came the great historians 



1 6 INTRODUCTION. 

and the most potent philosophers. Afterward, with the 
decay of public spirit, a decline in literature is visible. 
The drama loses its vigor, poetry its freshness, and rhetoric 
comes forward as a substitute for thought. Then the 
Greek intellect escaped from the narrow confines set by its 
physical boundaries. It cast its influence over Asia, Africa, 
and Rome. Alexandria took the place of Athens. Trade 
engrossed the activity of the members of the Areopagus. 
The long period of mental growth and poetic imaginings 
declined into a period of intellectual stagnation. Scholars 
became compilers, investigators, or critics, such as the nine- 
teenth century sees again. Imitation took the seat which 
invention had abandoned, while the material accumulated 
during the centuries of literary production was rehashed, 
and modified to suit the palates of a less aspiring genera- 
tion. At the same time the appetite for amusement was 
stimulated by the increase of riches. The merchants 
and their families, who now constituted the influential 
class in society, demanded their portion of the notoriety 
obtained by letters. And thus to compensate for the 
weakness of inventiveness in the higher branches of liter- 
ature, to satisfy the importunity of a set of patrons whose 
wealth was their chief endowment, and, possibly, to cater 
to the requirements of a sex debarred from the thea- 
ter and the forum, the chapbook of the Greek populace 
was raised, not long after the destruction of Corinth, to 
the dignity of a well-rounded novel. To be sure, its life 
was, so far as we know, unimportant and uneventful. Few 
specimens of its kind have come down to us of modern 
times, and it seems to have disappeared entirely with the 
last literary caste of Greece, the rhetoricians, leaving but 
slight traces of its existence on the subsequent fiction of 
eastern or western Europe. 

From the fifth to the fifteenth century of the Christian 
era humanity was obliged to do as well as it could without 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

the solace of novels. However, this deprivation was not 
so serious as it might seem, inasmuch as mankind, in the 
Dark and Middle Ages, possessed stories and superstitions 
in abundance. At all events a repose of so long a dura- 
tion redounded to the benefit of the novel as an influential 
factor in fiction. For when it came once more to the front, 
in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, it entered imme- 
diately and permanently upon a much wider career of 
prosperity. Not only did it sum up the traditions of 
mediaeval epic literature in the modern romance of chiv- 
alry, but in the sixteenth century it created from the ruins 
of the popular theater the realistic or picaresco novel, and 
from the rural poetry of Virgil and his Renaissance fol- 
lowers, both Spanish and Italian, the novel of pastoral 
disguises. 

Outside of Spain the sixteenth century saw no especial 
activity in novel-writing. In Italy the pastoral novel died 
away without leaving any particular heirs in fiction. In 
France and England imitation of Spanish writers did not 
begin until the last quarter of the same century. And 
only in far-off Cathay, at the very time when the mariners 
of the Spanish peninsula were seeking for a waterway to 
its golden shores, was there to be found contemporary 
with the Spanish romance of chivalry an independent and 
successful novel of manners. 

In the seventeenth century the prospect in Europe some- 
what broadens. Cervantes' wit marks in Spain the decline 
of the whole mass of unreal fiction, but the picaresco story 
continues one generation longer, accompanied by the 
glorious outburst of the Spanish drama. During this epoch 
Italy did nothing but follow servilely her Romance neigh- 
bor. In England, Shakspere and his successors had 
absorbed in their plays all the intellectual talents of the 
island. Germany had not yet awoke to genuine attempts 
at novelistic writing, and in France alone did the move- 



IS INTRODUCTION. 

ment which Spain had started in the previous century 
increase in power. True to their national characteristics 
the French modified and adapted to their own taste the 
ideas in fiction which they had received from abroad, and 
the material which renascent Europe had made available 
to them was increased by the addition of notable situa- 
tions chosen from the Greek novels, now widely read, and 
by the conceptions of the pastoral dramas of Italy. The 
sentiments of A?nadis of Gaul, of Diana, of Aminta, and the 
Pastor Fido were applied by them to actual life, and for 
more than fifty years the great compilations of D'Urfe, 
Gomberville, La Calprenede, and Madeleine de Scudery 
ruled polite society. 

Satirical and picaresco novels were also cultivated in_ 
France, while various other forms, political, allegorical, 
fantastic, and religious, united to bear witness to the 
popular craze for such literature. But the arrival of 
Moliere and Racine put a check on the productiveness of 
novelists. Dramatists and essayists became for many 
generations the fashion. Writers of fiction were few, and 
of the few nearly every one made his story-telling sub- 
ordinate to his other literary labors. Mme. de La Fayette 
stood almost alone in the last half of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, while Le Sage, Prevost, Marivaux, Rousseau, and 
Saint-Pierre make up the short list of successful authors in 
the eighteenth. 

For this latter epoch was reserved all the great revival of 
fiction which was to arouse the literary men of every nation 
of Europe, and advance the novelist to a front rank among 
writers. England was the place of the revival, and the 
honor of the awakening belongs to Richardson, Fielding, 
and perhaps also to Smollett. Their inspiration was 
varied, and their own genius was its wellspring. For Field- 
ing and Smollett the works of Cervantes, Le Sage, and the 
Spanish picaresco writers served as models. Richardson was 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

more individual in his form, and wider reaching also in his 
influence. It is interesting to see how he applied to his 
innate fondness for letter-writing the moral sentiments of 
the Spectator, and the ideas of the drama of the generation 
following. His novels are so many arguments on the 
reward of virtue and the punishment of vice. If the}? - excel 
in the delineation of female character, it is to be remembered 
that, like the compilers of prose fiction in the Middle Ages, 
their author addressed himself particularly to women. 

From England the movement soon returned to France. 
There, Rousseau fashioned after Richardson his eulogies of 
sentiment and nature, and passed them on to Germany, 
where Goethe became his disciple. But the development 
of this style was broken in upon by the commotions of the 
Revolution and the campaigns of the Empire. When peace 
was again restored, and literature was again sought after 
for its own sake, the historical romances of Walter Scott 
followed the reactionary idealism begotten of the conflict, 
while the social changes which pressed hard in the wake of 
these stormy times received their chroniclers in the persons 
of Stendhal and Balzac. 

In these two parallel streams, romantic and realistic, the 
currents of the novel of the nineteenth century flowed for 
more than fifty years, gathering to themselves during that 
period all the devious outpourings of the human heart, 
past, present, and to come. And when all the motives of 
fictitious composition had been explored, and drawn upon 
to their exhaustion, a great lull in novel-writing came, 
a calm such as has not existed for perhaps two centuries. 

When the present quiet will cease and a new movement 
begin it is impossible to predict. If the history of the past 
offers any assistance in the solution of the problem, we 
may learn from it that the novel, imitative in its material, 
depends for its inspiration and substance on the more 
inventive kinds of literature, the poetry and the drama. 



2 o IN TROD UCTION. 

Therefore a revival in novel-writing must be preceded by a 
revival in poetry, or by a renewal of dramatic power. But 
these highest manifestations of human thought owe their 
periods of quickening and splendor to great popular com- 
motions and modifications of the social state. Con. 
sequently, if these deductions be correct the twentieth 
century will be well on its way before the world beholds 
again any considerable flowering of romantic fiction. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE GREEK NOVEL. ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

There may have been novels among the Hindoos and 
Egyptians, whose civilizations had disappeared before the 
life of historical antiquity had begun, but so far as records 
are now extant it is the Greek novel that first made an 
appearance in literature. It was not a branch of writing 
much cultivated even in the period of decadence which 
produced it, if we are to judge from the few specimens 
preserved and from the absence of contemporary references 
to it. But it evidently flourished as vulgar reading for 
many centuries before it was touched up by art, and the 
rarity of its literary examples may be due to that severity of 
taste which was the inheritance of the Greek race, rather 
than to the loss of manuscripts. This same classical taste 
would also render the composition of the new branch of 
fiction a difficult task, demanding higher training and more 
invention than the romancers of the Middle Ages laid claim 
to, and thus would tend to limit the crowd of aspiring novel- 
ists, and permit only the works of the fittest. 

The leisure which the average citizen of Athens or 
Ephesus enjoyed was peculiarly adapted to the refinement 
and expression of thought, however trivial that thought 
might be. At no time in the life of the Grecian states do 
the great authors of their race appear to have been neg- 
lected, and this constant intercourse of posterity with their 
works evidently kept alive the notions of style, long after 
the inspiration of ideas had passed away. The civiliza- 
tion of the Greeks is a contrast to ours, particularly in the 



2 2 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

absence of a steady pressure to accumulate facts. Conse- 
quently the men of antiquity found time to discuss princi- 
ples. This feature is especially shown in the management 
of the Greek drama. The theater-goer knew beforehand 
all the events which the poet was to relate. There was, 
therefore, no burden of exposition laid upon the dramatist, 
but he was free to devote all his energies to the portrayal 
of the emotion or passion he wished to make prominent in 
his characters, and his audience could give its undivided 
attention to his purpose and plan. 

Now, this same care for literary polish and clever thinking 
may have had a repressive influence on the production 
of prose fiction as well, and the novels which have come 
down to us may include the larger number of the success- 
ful ones known to the ancients. Still, if this supposition 
be allowed, we may consider it as holding true only for 
the higher class of fictitious compositions, for what may be 
called literature, and that beneath this current of fine writ- 
ing and logical development there ran the broader and more 
turbid one of popular romances, having its sources even so 
far back as the period of decline in epic poetry. Such a 
theory is not only pleasing, but it is also natural, and would 
be supported by the analogy of the romances of chivalry, as 
we have seen. Yet we have no proofs of it at hand. No 
epic romances in prose are known in ancient literature, 
and even the half-historical one, which might have been 
patterned on prose versions of Greek feudal legends and 
foreign wars, cannot be earlier than the first century of 
the Christian era. 

To stick by the facts in the case, therefore, we are 
obliged to pass from the Homeric epics down over the 
flourishing centuries of Greek art and learning to that time 
in the history of the race when Greek genius had well-nigh 
run out. Long before the appearance of this first remnant 
of ancient prose fiction, the poetry of the isles and the 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 23 

drama of Attica had ceased to be living forces in the 
nation's development. The political liberty of the several 
states, and of the race as a whole, had yielded generations 
before to the attacks of factions and the inroads of foreign 
despotisms. The conquests of Alexander in the East had 
widened the horizon of Greek thought, and had spread 
Greek culture over a new and immense expanse of territory. 
So dilution of thought was necessary, and with its dilution 
its strength and its power of resistance to Oriental fantasies 
were impaired. The founding of Alexandria midway be- 
tween the East and the West, and the growth in popula- 
tion which increasing commerce fostered at the mouth of 
the Nile, soon made that town the intellectual center of the 
race as it was the center of opulence. 

Thus there came about a geographical displacement in 
Greek civilization, which found itself in an environment 
unknown to its traditions. With the mixture of peoples 
the mental conceptions of the new capital became cosmo- 
politan. Gradually the superstitions of Syria and Egypt 
were won over by the allurements of Athenian wit, and 
sought expression in a language whose polish and harmony 
had made it an almost universal tongue. And when this 
mingling of ideas and sentiments of widely different peoples 
had been fully accomplished, the physical strength of the 
Western barbarian overcame them all and broke down 
every barrier of race, to the profit of the all-absorbing 
dominion of Rome. 

The first Greek novel known to moderns was written in 
the midst of these surroundings, and under the influence of 
these conditions. The elements out of which it was made 
were partly Greek and partly Oriental. Yet in the fusion 
of the two civilizations, and in the mingling of the two 
streams of inspiration, it was the European which main- 
tained its supremacy over the Asiatic. The example of 
the heroic poetry of ancient Hellas and the power of 



24 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

the epic prose narratives, which undoubtedly kept alive 
its ideals and incidents among the people, prevailed 
even when its legends were transported to other lands and 
were circulated among a heterogeneous population. So we 
are not surprised to find the first surviving specimen of a 
Greek novel assimilating, in the land of Egypt, the material 
drawn from Oriental sources with the traditional concep- 
tion of a Homeric romance. Unfortunately the novel in 
question has been preserved only in a fragmentary state, 
and indeed has but recently been brought to the attention 
of the modern world. It was written on some rolls of 
Egyptian papyrus, which were much mutilated by the sub- 
sequent uses to which they were put. But still enough of 
the volume has been kept intact to reveal its subject and 
afford a fair idea of its style and contents. 

The subject is the love of young Nimrod, the fabulous 
founder of Nineveh, for a maiden whose name is not given, 
but who is evidently the great Semiramis. The lovers are 
cousins, and the fragment begins with a petition of the 
hero to his beloved's mother, Derkeia, not to delay the 
marriage any longer. He himself had journeyed far over 
distant countries, and as the ruler of many peoples had 
been courted everywhere and flattered. Yet faithful to 
the oath he had taken, he had remained ever true to his 
loved one, and now, as the captive of his mistress, he 
longed for the loosing of his bonds in wedlock. To this 
fervent plea Derkeia replied, that she esteemed his 
character and wondered at his fidelity, inasmuch as he was 
but seventeen years of age and already so powerful a 
prince, but that an ancient custom prevented the marriage 
of her child until she should reach the prescribed maturity 
of fifteen. Two years longer they must wait, subject to 
the will of fate, who might destroy them or keep them alive 
thus long. Naturally this answer was not pleasing to 
Nimrod, who entered on another oration, emphasizing the 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 25 

necessities of state that the royal line should be preserved, 
the uncertainty of a warrior's life, and the purity of his own 
intentions. To all of which Derkeia answered reservedly, 
but promised to intercede for him. Now the scene 
changes, and the maiden comes on in troubled conversation 
with Thambe, the mother of her sweetheart. Tears and 
sobs drown her words, in spite of Thambe's consolations. 
Finally, the older woman takes on herself to answer for the 
respectful conduct of her son, and restores happiness to 
the bosom of the girl by the portrayal of Nimrod's matri- 
monial zeal. With the rapturous gratitude of the girl the 
interview ends, and the first part of the story abruptly con- 
cludes with the meeting of the sisters to take counsel over 
their children. 

The second part of the novel evidently intended to 
relate the warlike prowess of the hero. But the gaps in the 
manuscript render uncertain the connection with the first 
part, and also what has happened since the deliberation of 
the mothers. Nimrod appears to be sunk in deep despair, 
at all events, and soon with the approach of spring he 
summons his host to a campaign against the Armenians. 
The numbers of his army, their advance over physical 
obstacles into the country of the enemy, and their wonder- 
ful formation in battle order are described most rhetori- 
cally. Nimrod himself takes charge of the cavalry, and 
after a harangue to the soldiers, presses on against the foe. 
The favorable outcome of the fight and the subsequent 
happy union of the lovers must be surmised, for at this 
point the fragment stops, and no sequel to it has as yet 
been found. 

How this tale of love and adventure may be related to 
supposed epic prose narratives of Greek tradition we can 
only conjecture. It has certainly forsaken their subject 
and their locality, and yet there is something in its tone 
which suggests the spirit of the Homeric age. This tone 



26 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

is not in the sentiment of the work, for such disquisitions 
on love and on the relations of the sexes were not highly 
valued in the flourishing period of Greek literature, and here 
they indicate clearly the effeminacy of a weakling genera- 
tion. Also tears, unless of anger, did not abound among 
the heroes of the Trojan war, and the loss of a woman's 
affection never reduced the feudal chieftains to emotional 
despair. But the choice of subject in the fragment offers 
a parallel to the epic themes. Instead of characters which 
were celebrated by Hellenic legend, our unknown author 
has availed himself of Babylonian tradition, and has taken 
from the stories extolling the might of Nimrod and the 
charms of Semiramis an outline for his narrative familiar 
to his public. This outline may have even passed among 
the credulous dwellers of Alexandria as true history. The 
characters here are also royal personages, like the great 
names of the Greek epic. The tone is aristocratic, the 
work is not plebeian, and it professes to narrate the youthful 
love and prowess of a noble pair, very much as in later 
times the romances glorified the names of Tristan and 
Iseult, of Amadis and Oriana, or as before its day the 
minstrels may have sung of Hector and Andromache. For 
such tales must have been abundant even in Greece, under 
the influence of that desire for narratives of love which is 
common to all times and to all races. 

There is a slight analogy between the story of Nimrod 
and the career of Amadis, the hero of the first romance of 
chivalry. Both loved at an early age, and were beloved 
by tender maidens. Each left his love to win fame by 
prowess at arms, and each kept inviolate, in the face of 
all temptations, the faith he had sworn to his mistress. 
Furthermore, both were the sons of kings and succeeded to 
kingdoms, and the girls they wooed were princesses. Such 
resemblances, which hold good for but one other Greek 
novel — and in that case very remotely — are of course 



GREEK NO VEL. ORIGIN A ND DE VEL OP MEN T. 27 

merely comparisons, and have very little practical bearing. 
Yet they might be used to support the conjectural theory 
that this single specimen of a Greek romance of chivalry — 
if we may properly give it that title — had the same career 
as Palmerin of England ; that its kind descended from 
the old epic poetry by the intermediary of prose versions ; 
that in these versions, destined wholly for popular use, the 
element of love played a constantly increasing part, in 
accordance with the trend of sentiment among the people ; 
and that when one day some literary man of talent looked 
about for a new theme to introduce into literature he found 
these traditional narratives awaiting his pleasure. It would 
be no difficult work to give them a literary finish, to expand 
certain descriptions in the rhetorical manner of the time, 
and to add certain details which would make the production 
more artistic and more vivid. The story of Nimrod would 
then be an imitation of one of these romances founded on 
national legends, substituting for them similar traditions of 
another race. They would, therefore, appeal to the readers 
of Alexandria and the cities of Syria as an acceptable 
departure from the time-worn paths of Hellenic story. 

When the loves of Nimrod and the maiden were first 
told is not certain. It was at least as early as the begin- 
ning of the first century of the Christian era, and probably 
preceded that date by a generation or more. Some dec- 
ades evidently must have elapsed between the appearance 
of this romance and the composition of the other Greek 
novels preserved, for the latter differ from the former 
entirely, both in sentiment and in choice of subject. They 
break away wholly from past tradition, legendary or his- 
torical, and represent only the feeling of their own times. 
Their tone is plebeian, their descriptions are often realistic, 
and their actors are almost without exception chosen from 
the merchant classes. They also lessen notably the part of 
love in their narratives, and reduce it almost to the office 



28 GREEK NO VEL. ORIGIN AND DE VELOPMENT. 

of a mere connecting link, which neither inspires deeds nor 
rewards them. Love would seem to be the motive power 
in the story of Nimrod, and his exploits were undertaken 
to fix on himself more firmly the affection of his mistress. 
So he confesses himself her slave. But in the Greek novels 
of the later period Fate, which in Nimrod merely cuts short, 
or prolongs, the lives of mortals, is responsible both for the 
action of the story and its adventures, while love plays little 
part in the leave-takings. 

The author, however, of the Nimrod fragment belongs to 
the same class of writers to whom the later novels owe 
their existence. He is a rhetorician, a Sophist, as the 
schoolmen of antiquity were called. He delights in emo- 
tional scenes, in descriptions of passions, in pictures of 
incidents, and especially in long orations. The Sophists 
formed the literary class of the Greek decadence. They 
had in keeping the traditions of the classical past. They 
were the appointed guardians of the perfected tongue. 
They dictated the use of words and set the models for 
composition. They were in fact the academicians of the 
day, the instructors of the youth, and the professors of elo- 
quence and public speaking. 

The Greeks of the Alexandrian age attached an extreme 
importance to the mode, the manner of literary expression. 
And this cultivation of style seems rather singular, in view 
of the decline in the other branches of art, which flourish 
as a rule contemporaneously with a refined taste in litera- 
ture. The loss of political independence, and the exhaus- 
tion of the native vigor of the Greek mind, had betrayed 
itself in the domain of the fine arts by the substitution of 
an allegorical conception of sculpture and painting for the 
ideal representation of the ancestral gods and national 
heroes. The migration to Syria and Egypt had gradually 
introduced a liking for adornment and Oriental picturesque- 
ness. The results of these changes were manifested in art 



GREEK NOVEL, ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 29 

by the use of groups for single figures, of which we have 
some instances in the later novels of the time, by an imita- 
tion of the classical themes of mythology, by the painting of 
landscapes, and a lavish use of color. Mosaics came into 
fashion at this epoch. 

The Greek artists left the delineation of the ideal for the 
description of the real, and by thus contributing to dry up 
the springs of the imagination they quickly descended from 
realism to crudeness — to what we to-day call naturalism. 
So poetry in art disappeared and with it poetry in litera- 
ture. Literature degenerated into rhetoric, and ornamen- 
tation of phrase and sentence took the place of classical 
simplicity and harmony. 

Now the period of this exaggerated fondness for rhetoric 
coincided with the centuries when the Greek' novel — as we 
now know it — flourished. And all internal evidence goes 
to show that the teachers of rhetoric, the dialecticians of 
antiquity, were the makers of the literary form of the novel. 
The themes given out for practice in their schools were on 
such subjects as are most frequently amplified in the ro- 
mances, such as descriptions of nature and natural phenom- 
ena, verbal reproductions of paintings and statuary, fusions 
of mythological legends with tales of humble life, dramatic 
plots, outlines of orations, folk-lore, traditions, and what- 
ever might lend itself to rhetorical ornamentation. As the 
demand of the public for such diversion increased, the 
Sophists became a great power in the state. They seem to 
have considered the whole field of human activity as their 
possession, and worked it to their own aggrandizement. 
We can conceive then that when the chapbook of the 
people first attracted their attention, bowed under the 
weight of its accumulated traditions gathered since the 
heroic era of the race, or half hidden by the overflow of 
Oriental marvels and superstitions, that the vainglorious 
schoolmen had no scruples at all in relieving it of its 



3° GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

burdens, in shaping anew its proportions, and in bestowing 
on its homely outlines the saving grace of their own art. 
The result of their zeal was that the Greek novel came 
forth, a new creation in literature, not at all discreditable 
to its sponsors. 

The Greek novel owes to the Sophists, not its existence, 
but its reputation and preservation. Besides the many 
correspondences of manner and subject already pointed 
out, there may be cited as proofs of their handiwork the 
pathos of the harangues, and the elaborate expressions of the 
letters inserted in the narrative. The Sophists also became 
prominent not many decades before the beginning of the 
Christian era, and from this period dates our earliest 
specimen of the novel, the love of Nimrod and the maiden. 
Probably the predecessors of this story had been prose 
romances which celebrated more particularly the heroes of 
old Greece. To substitute for them the royal figures of 
Asiatic history was comparatively easy. We may also infer 
that many of these imitations abounded in Antioch and 
Alexandria, since the original romance of Greek chivalry 
was the favorite reading in the pejietralia of Athens and 
Ephesus. But the Nimrod story is the only one of its kind 
which has outlived the revenge of time. It is the only 
narrative of court life, aristocratic in its entire feeling, 
which survives among the novels of Hellenic literature, 
For though other novels, equally the work of the Sophists 
have come down to posterity, they differ completely in tone 
and sentiment from this solitary tale of love among princes. 

The main cause for this difference undoubtedly lies in 
those changes in social conditions which took place between 
the invention of the story of Nimrod and the composition 
of its rivals. The time interval between the two may have 
been as much as 150 years. It must have been at least 
three generations. It would seem that the Roman con- 
quest of the East, which took place at the time when the 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 31 

Sophists were aspiring to the universal control of literature, 
had done away with all class distinctions, and had leveled 
local aristocrats and democrats alike before the paramount 
privilege of Roman citizenship. With the establishment of 
this right, which even the most ancient princely houses 
coveted, had come expansion of commerce, already incited 
by the rule of an Alexander. When the despotism of the 
Roman emperors had become assured, and there was no 
longer any barrier in caste between the sovereign and the 
people, a social revolution had been accomplished analo- 
gous to the transformation of France under Louis XI. 
The mercantile class became practically the entire nation. 
And this class was no longer composed of pure Greeks 
only, but was made up of the various peoples which crowded 
together in Alexandria, Antioch, Cyprus, Ephesus, or 
Smyrna. 

By their inheritance these new rulers of public thought 
were not favorably inclined to the maintenance of Hellenic 
tradition. The aristocrats, whom they had overcome in the 
municipality, they would naturally antagonize in the do- 
main of literature also. The loss of political liberty would 
be another element of destruction to the cultivation of the 
patriotic and national themes which had absorbed the 
poets and dramatists of ancient Greece. Broader and 
more general subjects would be required by the mingling 
of races and customs. So in this period — when the Soph- 
ists represented the lovers of the higher literature — erudi- 
tion, scientific research, the compilation and verification of 
known facts occupied the time of scholars, while commerce 
and the pursuit of wealth claimed the attention of the 
whilom soldiers and statesmen. 

It was to be expected that this overturning of the whole 
economy of the various classes of society, their new rela- 
tions to one another and to the outside world, would be 
reflected in the literary production of the times. The 



3 2 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

increase of riches had surely increased the number of 
readers and had thus expanded the public tributary to 
authors. But this very increase on the part of those who 
had cultivated in the past no literary traditions, and who 
furthermore were undoubtedly hostile to the old ones, was 
bound to affect unfavorably the existing standards of taste 
and style. It must be admitted, too, that the first influence 
of Christianity contributed to the same end. The new 
religion was confined for a while almost entirely to the 
traders and mariners, and to the poorest of these. It 
therefore would be tinged by their social prejudices and 
mental attitudes, and, as we know, it displayed in many of 
its apologists a decided enmity to the rich and powerful. 
Besides this shadow of worldly taint, the mission of 
Christianity was to supplant, to banish the old and put 
forward the new, to destroy the civilization of the ancient 
world and begin the civilization of the modern. Now the 
great monuments of Greek literature were based on the 
mythology of the race, and on the adoration of physical 
phenomena. All this display of fancy and art must there- 
fore have aroused the twofold hostility of the adherents 
of a struggling creed, which enjoined on its followers the 
fraternity of mankind, as well as the worship of one God. 
Caste and paganism were their natural enemies, and to pre- 
pare the way for the new era of peace and love these twin 
supporters of the old order of things must first be done 
away with. On the other hand it is an axiom that only by 
the study of recognized models, bequeathed by the masters 
of past civilizations, and by a return to nature for fresh 
material to be cast in the mold furnished by these models, 
can a revival of literary taste or artistic refinement ever be 
accomplished. The Greco-Romans, and particularly the 
Christians, who gloried in a revealed religion, abhorred 
the teachings of nature and hated the forms of classical 
culture. Therefore the Sophists, who alone endeavored to 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 3$ 

oppose the popular will, and to keep alive the memories of 
the great artists in literature, attracted no earnest body of 
supporters, and hence their admiration for the past became 
perfunctory and barren of quickening results. 

It is to all these transformations, social, national, political, 
and religious, that we may very plausibly ascribe the differ- 
ence in spirit and subject between the Nimrod fragment 
and the surviving novels of the later Alexandrian era. 
The former still respected the traditions of the race. It 
was composed before the rise of the one-man power at 
Rome, before the great extension of Oriental trade, and 
before the promulgation of the new tenets of religion. 
Probably when this story was written the Greek emigrants 
to the Nile Delta still preserved intact their ancestral 
customs. They still held at bay the inroads of the Eastern 
peoples which they swayed, and were only beginning to 
avail themselves of the legends and superstitions of their 
subjects. When, soon afterward, they too became the 
vanquished and were arbitrarily classed by the new con- 
querer with the mass of mankind outside the pale of 
Roman citizenship, the bulwarks of national prejudice, which 
they had hitherto defended against the beleaguering bar- 
barians, were also swept away, and Greek mingled freely 
with Asiatic in the preparation for the new era of the 
world. 

Accordingly, popular literature assumed the character- 
istics of the new surroundings. The past was ignored. 
The present became the theme. No longer were the 
loves of kings and princesses described to arouse the 
enthusiasm of a loyal public. The patrons of literature, 
the merchants and traders of the Roman East, demanded 
that they themselves be eulogized in the works of romantic 
fiction, and that their adventures and domestic relations 
furnish the material for the story. And consequently the 
Greek novel of the four centuries which followed the de- 



34 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

struction of Jerusalem is the opposite in exploits and senti- 
ments of the Greek novel which preceded the complete 
fusion of Greek and Oriental. Its heroes are ordinary 
characters of the middle class, and its incidents are vulgar 
happenings to travelers and seafarers. With the exception 
of Heliodorus, who calls up in the fifth century the ghost 
of the old romance of chivalry, everything in this new 
school of fiction is common and plebeian to a degree. No 
greater change occurred later on in Spanish fiction, when 
Amadis of Gaul yielded to the picaresco tales of Lazarillo 
de Tormes and Guzman de Alfarache. 

Yet in this new age of novelistic effort the same methods 
of composition prevail as in the former period. Emotions 
continue to be dramatically portrayed, and orations are still 
delivered with fulsome eloquence. The fact is, that the 
Sophist of the earlier epoch — to whose self-consciousness 
was very likely due the first deviation from the established 
tradition of the Homeric prose epic — has weathered the 
social and political storm, and now adapts his pen with 
praiseworthy flexibility to the new customs and the new 
requirements. Whether as an idealist or a realist, he 
retains the manner he had learned in the schools, and con- 
nects the romance of chivalry with the plebeian narratives 
by the links of his peculiar rhetorical phrases. From the 
standpoint of style the Greek novel of both periods is one 
and the same. Possibly also there may have been internal 
evidences of relationship between the two schools, in works 
which have not come down to us, and the monopoly of the 
right to manufacture novels which was retained by the 
Sophists would make such a supposition likely. But there 
are no existing proofs of such a gradation, and the first 
novel of the new epoch, of which we have any knowledge, 
is unfortunately lacking in its original text, thus forcing 
us to form an idea of its contents by the analysis which a 
bibliographer of many centuries later has handed down to us. 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 35 

However, from his summary we can gain a fair notion of 
the characteristics of the bourgeois style of Greek nar- 
ration. 

The bibliographer in question is Photius, the learned 
patriarch of Constantinople, who lived in the ninth century, 
and the analysis of the novel is found in his celebrated 
Myriobiblion, which has preserved for posterity so many 
of the writings of antiquity. In this compilation, Photius 
quotes quite extensively from the book of a certain An- 
tonius Diogenes, who seems to have been an author of the 
beginning of the second century. His narrative is called 
by Photius The Marvelous Things beyond Thule. It was in 
twenty-four books, and its author claims to have borrowed 
his material from preceding writers. The story is told, in 
the first person, by Dinias, the leading character, and who is 
an Arcadian settled in Tyre, to Cymba one of his former 
compatriots. 

Dinias, with his son Demochares, had left Arcadia with 
the object of improving their minds by travel. But instead 
of visiting the centers of civilization they voyaged over the 
seas of Greece to the northward, and journeyed through 
savage tribes to the shores of the Scythian ocean, and 
thence to the island of Thule, which lies toward the sunset. 
There Dinias met a maiden of Tyre, Dercyllis, who with 
her brother, Mantinias, had fallen prey to the cunning of 
an Egyptian priest, Paapis. They had been induced by 
him to give to their parents a healing draught, as they 
supposed, but which turned out to be a sleep potion of the 
strongest sort. Unable to arouse the victims from their 
lethargy, and fearing punishment for their mistake, the 
children had fled from Tyre. Over the Mediterranean they 
wandered to Italy. There Dercyllis descended into Hades 
and explored its mysteries under the guidance of Myrto, 
one of her servants, who had died some time before. 
Coming again at length into the light of day she loses her 



3 6 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

brother, but finds other companions, with whom she visits 
Spain and the remoter Celts. After long stages, in which 
many wonders are seen and much magic is practiced, she 
returns to Italy and finds there Paapis, and also her 
brother, who has himself undergone wonderful experiences 
in the sun and moon and in distant islands. The two now 
unite to rob the priest of his implements of magic and flee 
to Thrace, where an oracle foretells their excursion to 
Thule and their ultimate return to Tyre, after undergoing 
many hardships. 

Mutual adventures of so thrilling a sort awakened of 
course the tender passion in the breasts of both Dinias and 
Dercyllis. But their true love has many courses yet to 
run, of strange perils, incantations, occasional suicides, 
resurrections, and murders, until it finally triumphs over 
all obstacles, and Dercyllis, whom a robust constitution 
and much exercise in the open air have kept alive in spite 
of everything, returns to Tyre with her brother, while 
Dinias joins an expedition to the North Pole and eventually 
does the tour of the moon. His sight-seeing propensities 
are dulled at last, and by availing himself of a magic wish 
granted him he is transported to Tyre, where he meets his 
true love and all her relatives, who have by this time slept 
off their potion. In order to preserve to mankind the 
account of their journeyings they now hire an Athenian 
orator to inscribe them on two tablets, one for Cymba, as a 
reward for his auditory endurance, the other for Dercyllis 
to place in Dinias' tomb. This latter copy was found in 
after years by one of Alexander's soldiers, at the capture of 
Tyre, and passing through many hands came at length into 
the possession of Antonius. He did not delay in giving it 
to the public, with a dedication to his sister Isidora. 

This abstract of The Marvelous Things beyond Thule 
must be the barest outline of the original work. Yet it is 
sufficient to show plainly the spirit of the story, and the 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 37 

principal elements which entered into its composition. 
It is clearly a tale of erotic adventure, inclining more to 
the adventurous side than the amorous, though its dedica- 
tion to a woman might suggest the inference that the com- 
plete novel contained a stronger dose of love than appears 
in Photius' summary. Still, as we get it, the love story 
seems to be a device for introducing new adventures by 
repeated descriptions of what befell both hero and heroine. 
In this respect, as well as in the social standing of the 
characters, Antonius diverges entirely from such romances 
as the Nimrod fragment. In the good old times the 
woman stayed at home, and had no experience in wander- 
ing. The hero performed all that. But here, and in the 
novels which follow, the heroine is subject to the same con- 
ditions of life as the hero, and undergoes her full share of 
adventures by sea and land. Such a transformation of the 
female part in the action reveals an entirely different class 
of readers, and a wholly different conception of the place 
of woman in society, and this intrinsic change proves of 
itself a descent of the novel in the social scale. It had 
passed from the nobility to the commoners. 

The subject chosen by Antonius partakes largely of the 
marvelous, dealing in incantations and magic, as well as in 
fantastic adventures, such as the journey to Hades — a 
favorite excursion with the ancient authors — expeditions to 
the North Pole, and round-trips to the heavenly bodies. 
These were undoubtedly among the notions which our 
novelist borrowed from his predecessors, and in certain 
places they appear to be results of his sympathy with the 
doctrines of Pythagoras. Now the subsequent Greco- 
Roman novels accepted the element of magic, but rejected 
these fanciful adventures. They were more matter-of-fact 
and realistic, and could hardly be expected to indulge in 
such extravagant episodes. So in this striking character- 
istic Antonius stands alone, and his work may perhaps be 



3 8 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT, 

an example of the transition stage between the imaginary 
narrative of vulgar life and the presentation of actual 
events which take place in current existence. Possibly the 
imaginary tale may have served also for a parody on the 
exploits of the noble heroes of the old novels, just as in 
modern times Don Quixote was a parody on Amadis of 
Gaul. But our later stories of fantastic or satirical adven- 
tures, beloved of Swift, Poe, or Verne, do not proceed 
directly from The Marvelous Things beyond Thtde. The 
models for these were the novels of Cyrano de Bergerac, 
that witty Frenchman of the seventeenth century, and his 
great predecessor was Lucian, who may perhaps have 
parodied Antonius, but who certainly found his ultimate 
inspirations in the teachings of the Pythagoreans. 

The other elements of Antonius' narrative remain in the 
works of his rivals. All the Greek novelists of the bour- 
geois school delight in murders and suicides, perhaps 
because of the opportunity thus afforded them for highly 
colored delineations, and certainly because of the terror 
and interest such events are supposed to excite. The 
solutions of their various plots likewise imitate his melo- 
dramatic ending. Vice is always punished and virtue 
rewarded. The heavy villain is foiled, and persecuted 
innocence repeatedly escapes from the many snares set for 
its unwary feet, until at last it finds safety and peace in 
the arms of Hymen. Cruel stratagems and violence may 
for a time postpone the desired conclusion, but it comes at 
last, as inevitably in the fiction of the Alexandrian age as 
in the popular novels of the nineteenth century. 

Apart from the divergence in sentiment between the 
Greek romances of chivalry and the later plebeian novels, 
there is a notable difference in the motive to the action. 
It would seem as though the former introduced adventures 
into its narrative through a certain psychological impulse, 
arising from the love of the hero for the heroine, and 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 39 

his desire to win his spurs in order to be more worthy 
of her hand. In the novels of Antonius and his successors 
this motive is lost. Far from being an incentive to the 
action of the story, love might now be rightly considered 
a hindrance to it, for the loving pair never willingly take 
leave of each other, and sometimes the separation is 
brought about even after their happy marriage. This pass- 
ing away of the natural motive to the action must have taken 
place at some point in the transition from the later epic 
romance, of which the Nimrod fragment would be a fair 
example, to the vulgar stories of ordinary life. And its 
disappearance would seem to indicate that this period of 
transition was an era of parody on the prose epics rather 
than of serious novelistic construction. For a parody 
would not require a plot, but would put all its stress on 
ridiculing different episodes, as Cervantes has clearly 
demonstrated. So when the time for genuine fiction came 
again, and it was necessary to create the novel of every- 
day life, the authors who had gone so far astray from the 
natural method of construction were hard pressed for a 
means of starting their stories, and of continuing them when 
the leading episode was exhausted. Instead of returning to 
nature and finding there an impelling force, their artificial 
conception of conventional literature sought for springs of 
action outside of the assumed relationship of their charac- 
ters. The methods of the dramatists were constantly before 
their eyes, offering devices ready to hand, and so we find that 
a deus ex machina is the main reliance of Alexandrian fiction. 
But still true to the received tradition, this external agent 
took the form of some command from an oracle, which the 
lovers and their parents were bound to obey unquestion- 
ingly ; or it became even a genuine personification of Tyche, 
the goddess of fate or chance, whom we call by her Latin 
name of Fortuna. She it was who especially delighted in 
separating the hero from his loved one, and in disarranging 



4° GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

the best-laid plans of mortals who were subject to her 
caprice. And when the Greek novelist had once admitted 
the efficacy of these supernatural powers, he had no further 
need to bother about inherent motives of action. When 
situations could be suddenly transformed with a stroke of 
the pen, all the labor of plotting and planning the various 
turns of his narrative was labor ill-spent. 

There is no need of insisting on the two chief elements 
of these novels of antiquity, epic or plebeian. Love and 
adventure are the constant ingredients of the most simple 
kinds of fiction in all periods of the world's literature. 
They are as old as mankind, and reappear, after each de- 
cadence of the human race, endowed with all the vigor of 
the regenerated people. To be sure, the literature of an- 
cient Greece had kept the element of love in the back- 
ground, and had thereby confessed its fear of that absorb- 
ing passion. The early epics were in their nature warlike 
and foreign to the tender emotion, and the drama which 
succeeded them was based on the national mythology and 
shared its prejudices. The undue absence of love in the 
higher literature reveals a deliberate and formal resolve 
against its employment, and leads to the surmise that it 
must have been the great theme of the intimate poetry 
and legend. It is possible, for instance, that in the popu- 
lar tradition the alienation of Achilles from the Gre- 
cian interest may have been based on something which 
would appeal more to common sympathy than his Homeric 
attitude of offended dignity. And who knows to what an 
idyl the relations of Hector and Andromache may have 
given birth, with the story-tellers of the domestic fireside? 
So, while no important work of the classical literature may 
be said to have chosen love for its theme, yet allusions to 
the passion are plentiful enough, and hints at erotic folk- 
tales are not wanting. After the decline of the great epics 
the elegiac poetry, which to some extent succeeded them 



mm^mmm 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 41 

in popular favor, seems to have depended for much of its 
interest on the portrayal of affairs of the heart. Through 
these elegies, and through the later stories of mythology 
and folk-lore, we have gained an insight into such legends 
as the loves of Cupid and Psyche, the wooing of Daphne 
by Apollo, and the never-dying affection of that god for 
the metamorphosed image of his mistress, or the punish- 
ment of Arsinoe, who for her harshness was changed to 
stone before the corpse of her departed suitor. Out of 
such material as this Ovid fashioned many of his most 
winning stories ; and whatever was their outward disguise, 
religious or allegorical, at the bottom of these legends of 
the Greek people lay something most tenderly human, which 
has outlived in the sympathy of mankind all the enmity 
manifested toward them by the defenders of classical art. 
When the higher literature of the nation passed away 
into tradition, these pathetic tales of love and disappointment 
increased in influence. The poets of the decadence sought 
through them to gain the attention of the public, and to 
their efforts we owe our knowledge of the calm fidelity of 
Pyramus and Thisbe, as well as the tragic courtship of Hero 
and Leander. Not only did they keep alive the love plots 
which they took from the bards of the people, but they 
gave them an artistic form, modified their contents, and 
adapted them to the taste of the age by adding many rhe- 
torical features, which descended later to the love story of 
the Greek novel. Among these are such standard episodes 
as the meeting of a couple in a temple and their sudden 
change, by a single glance, from enemies of Eros into his 
worshipers, the subsequent progress of the erotic malady, 
its torments by night and day, the laments of its victims 
poured forth to groves and rocks, the consolation afforded 
by plucking the petals of flowers, and the satisfaction given 
by carving the name of the beloved in the bark of sympa- 
thetic trees. The constant use of these incidents by the 



4 2 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

erotic poems of the Greek decadence and by the later novels 
of the Greco-Roman period, would point to a fairly intimate 
connection between these two forms of fanciful narration. 

But the element of adventure — if Antonius' story and 
the novels which followed his are good representatives — 
was much stronger in the prose fiction of the Alexandrian 
age than the element of love. Possibly this is the case 
among all peoples, that the telling of deeds is a more inex- 
haustible mine of interest than the account of an abstract 
emotion. Still the Greeks, owing to their location on both 
sides of the ^Egean, and in the islands studding that sea, 
were particularly open to the allurements of travel. Their 
earliest traditions are those of voyages — Jason and the 
Argonauts, Ulysses, and Hercules. The colonies which 
they founded in every part of the Mediterranean attracted 
the merchants and mariners of the mother country long 
after the freebooting, adventurous spirit of the race had 
calmed down with the development of a stable civiliza- 
tion. Yet discoveries were still made, and the more rest- 
less souls, pushing ever beyond the confines of the known 
world, were constantly bringing back to the metropolis fresh 
tales of wonderful experiences. The sum total of these 
narratives of adventure, accumulating in the legends of the 
people from the time of the first half-mythological expedi- 
tions to the latest explorations beyond the Spanish straits, 
can only be conjectured. The epic poems of Greece, the 
chronicles of her historians, and the dreams of her philos- 
ophers bear witness to their multiplicity and their extent. 

The Marvelous Things beyond Thule, even in its frag- 
mentary state, is therefore a very good example of the 
fusion and the relative proportion of the two elements 
which made up the Greek novels of the more vulgar type. 
It also gives a fair idea of the locality where they were pro- 
duced, and of the composite character of the peoples which 
favored them. It is no longer Athens and the Peloponnesus 



MiMMM 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 43 

which are described; but Asia Minor and its outlying islands, 
Syria and Egypt are to be the homes of the actors and 
the chosen setting for their wanderings. Antonius, whose 
desire for the marvelous is unrestrained by the later dis- 
cipline of the school, transgresses, to be sure, these boun- 
daries and leads his heroes on an endless chase throughout 
our planetary system. But he takes care to make Tyre 
the central point of his story, and though it is incidentally 
connected with Greece proper, this is evidently done only in 
obedience to the requirements of previous tradition. The 
social position of Antonius' characters is as significant as 
the change in geographical location. The romances of 
chivalry must have entirely died out among the reading 
public for the novelist to presume to celebrate only actors 
of common birth. The third estate had gathered to itself 
all the emoluments of existence, and the rule of the aristo- 
crat was never to be restored in the civilization of antiquity. 
And the trading class was neither refined nor high-princi- 
pled, if we are to believe its eulogists in fiction. 

Antonius dedicated his work to his sister. It is possible 
that this notion was suggested to him by the prominence of 
the heroine in the adventures he narrates, for she claims in 
them a share almost equal to the quota of the hero. The 
appearance of a woman in a leading part was nothing new to 
fiction. In the epic prose narratives, and in such stories of 
high life as the Nimrod fragment, she must have already 
occupied a place, second in importance to that of the hero 
only. But in these aristocratic stories her demeanor was 
more retiring. The girl of high birth in all Greek and Latin 
countries was always secluded, both before and after mar- 
riage, from public gaze and public interest. Among the 
Athenians, down to their absorption by Macedonia, we know 
that the same customs in regard to women were observed, 
And it does not seem credible that when the scene of 
action was transferred to the cities of Asia Minor and Syria, 



44 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

this attitude of the ruling classes toward their wives and 
daughters could have been seriously modified. Only the 
women of the lowest grades in family and social standing 
could have frequented the streets of Antioch and Ephesus. 
That the novelists were aware of these restrictions is clear 
from the conventional way in which they first bring their 
couples together. The meeting takes place generally in a 
temple, as the only spot where both sexes could properly 
meet. And when the wanderings begin, it is almost always 
by violence or accident that the girl is exposed to the ad- 
ventures she undergoes. Antonius' heroine fled because 
she supposed herself in danger of condemnation by law, 
and thus of being enrolled among criminals. But the 
proprieties being once satisfied, and the heroines safely 
embarked on their wanderings, the novelist gives free rein 
to his fancy and puts their reputation as travelers on the 
same plane as the fame of his heroes. 

But these continued peregrinations must have been 
unnatural except with women of degraded life, and they 
must have been kept up to satisfy a particular demand on 
the part of the readers of fiction. For there are many 
instances in the novels where the heroine is reduced to 
slavery, or at best to a kind of servitude, and she is held in 
very light esteem by her captors and persecutors, escaping 
the common consequences of their contempt only by the 
display of extraordinary talents, or by the sudden appear- 
ance of the hero. So it is quite plausible to suppose that 
in this reduplication of dangers surmounted by members of 
the gentler sex, there is a deliberate purpose on the part of 
the novelist to cater to the prejudices of his public, and that 
as the romances of the preceding period celebrated the 
beauty and purity of noble maidens, and showed how the 
very memory of their charms swayed in his absence the most 
powerful of princes, these historians of a lower social caste 
had in mind the cloistered families of the great merchants, 



_______ 



GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 45 

and indulged the secluded readers of their times with the 
tales of woman's freedom — though in danger — and her reli- 
ance on her own talents and energy. It was not a life of 
ideal liberty which 'they thus portrayed to the wives of the 
Greco-Romans, but it was at least an improvement over an 
every-day existence shut up within four walls. And the 
tyranny of Tyche was very likely preferable in their minds 
to the lordship of an irresponsible husband. 

Here we have doubtless the real audience of the Greco- 
Roman novelist. He wrote for the women of his time, as 
the romancer of the preceding period had written for the 
aristocratic families of the classical era, and as the story- 
teller of the Middle Ages invented for the benefit of the 
gentle ladies of France. Nor does it appear that this 
appeal to woman corresponds to any change in her condi- 
tion. The royal mistresses of the epics were flattered by 
the pictures of the power they exerted over man from the 
midst of their calm retirement. The wives of the commer- 
cial princes of Syria and Egypt delighted in the freedom 
which their fictitious adventures granted them in common 
with their seafaring masters. The writers of each school 
responded to the leading passion of his public, and endeav- 
ored to beguile its forced inactivity with a delineation of 
the desired influence and career. We must not be surprised, 
then, that Antonius dedicated his fantastic tale to his sister, 
for he probably knew, as Sir Philip Sidney with his Arcadia, 
what best suited the temperament of his dearest relative. 

The lack of a psychological motive for the action of the 
Greek novel, and the centering of all its events on the 
caprice of destiny, naturally deprived its characters of any 
particular traits which would make them interesting to 
modern readers. Hero and heroine were marionettes, pup- 
pets who danced on the wires which Fortune pulled. As 
they were devoid of any individuality, so their emotions 
of sorrow or joy were conventional and gesticulatory, 



46 GREEK NOVEL. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. 

like those of the average actor. Together with this 
uniformity of personal attributes went a rhetorical con- 
ception of nature. For physical phenomena were by no 
means disregarded by these artists of the schools, and in 
the description of storms at sea they especially attained 
quite a remarkable degree of pictorial excellence. Yet 
whatever may have been these deficiencies in the creation 
of living people, we must concede to the Greek novelist 
a considerable amount of observation and a ready adapta- 
tion to the taste of his readers. His narrative is often 
vivacious, in spite of his academic training, and his style, 
even if it was a kind of mosaic made up out of the fragments 
of classical art, is not to be dismissed without commenda- 
tion. Could the Sophist have broken loose from the pre- 
cepts of his class, he might easily have handed down to 
posterity enduring and interesting studies of contemporary 
manners. But with the traditions that girt him about, and 
the demands for fine writing to which he felt obliged to 
respond, his productions are wholly unsympathetic in their 
subject-matter, and seemed designed entirely for such 
excitations of transitory emotions and displays of literary 
art as could have deceived in their purpose only the most 
credulous among his readers. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

The account of The Marvelous Things beyond Thule is 
fantastic and improbable, but the narratives which followed 
it are limited to known occurrences and possible happen- 
ings. The majority of the novelists of the new school 
rather emphasized the realistic part of their work. A 
favorite proceeding with them was to compose detailed 
descriptions of places and things which were familiar to 
their readers, and to turn contemporary fashions and 
customs to good use. In this way their most extraordinary 
incidents acquired a striking actuality. They also refused 
to follow Antonius in the scope of his adventures. While 
he knew no limits to the climates and worlds visited by his 
characters, his successors confined their topography to the 
boundaries of civilization, and in fact rarely departed from 
the countries which border the eastern shores of the 
Mediterranean. 

This decided transference of the action, from the realms 
of fancy to those of fact, reveals a great difference in theory 
between the later novelists and Antonius. If we may judge 
by Photius' analysis of his book his interest lay mainly in 
the number and strangeness of the incidents he could 
relate. In this respect he seems to be at variance with the 
general method of the Sophists, and perhaps was in fact 
not an adherent of that school, but a free lance who wrote 
for the delectation of his own immediate circle. Of his 
style and composition we can of course gain no idea from 
Photius' summary, but all available evidence would go to 

47 



48 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

show that he thought mainly of what he should write, 
while his artistic successors laid their chief stress on the 
manner in which they wrote. And possibly if we had the 
facts in the case placed plainly before us, we might discover 
that Antonius was a story-teller of the people ; that The 
Marvelous Things beyond Thule was intended for popular 
consumption ; and that Antonius' talent and powers of in- 
vention may have contributed much to bring these vulgar 
accounts of wonderful adventures to the attention of the 
more refined and cultivated schoolmen. They, in their 
search for something new, would then have abandoned the 
old romances of chivalry for the fresher tales of popular 
tradition and superstition. 

The six novels of the later school in Greek fiction which 
have been preserved in their original form are all pro- 
ductions of the Sophists. In date they must have followed 
Antonius, being composed between the beginning of the 
second and the end of the fifth century of our era. On 
general principles we cannot say that these few stories are 
all the novels which were written during the Greco-Roman 
period, though according to the law of the survival of the 
fittest they may very well have been the best of their kind. 
But we must remember that the great destruction of manu- 
scripts, during the many centuries which elapsed between 
the reign of Constantine and the rule of the Medici, 
involved the loss of records of a far greater importance 
than was attached to the literature of mere amusement. 
Thus we are left almost entirely in the dark as to the 
extent and interest of the love stories of antiquity. That 
they must have been many and excellent may be inferred 
from the fragments of novels — clearly due to Sophist 
influence — which reappear among the legends of the 
Middle Ages. One of the most favorite stories with the 
clerks and warriors of the twelfth century, Apollonius of 
Tyre, is a genuine Greek novel, which can be traced no 



GREEK NO VEL. A UTHORS AND WORKS. 49 

further back than to a Latin version, while others, less 
complete, furnished plots and episodes to the writers of 
mediaeval Greece and Italy. 

Of the six novels of the Alexandrian epoch which have 
come down to modern times in the original Greek, five are 
stories of erotic adventure, like the narrative of Antonius, 
and one is the pastoral, Daphnis and Chloe. The earliest 
of the novels of erotic adventure has been saved for us by 
the same Photius of Myriobiblion fame, and we also know 
that manuscripts of it, now lost, were extant in the Renais- 
sance. It is the Babylonica of Jamblichus, a Syrian writer, 
who lived in the second century, in the time of the Antonines. 
He wrote in Greek, evidently regarding it as the universal 
language, but his subject, as the title indicates, was sug- 
gested by a Babylonian tutor, and the work pretends to be 
made up from Babylonian traditions and to describe the 
customs of that capital. Jamblichus chooses as a heroine 
Sinonis, wjio with her husband, Rhodanes, flies from the 
unwelcome suit of Garmus, king of Babylon. The king sends 
eunuchs in their pursuit, and the story enters at once upon 
a series of strange performances. A demon-goat drives 
the lovers from their first shelter to a cave, which bees then 
successfully defend against the king's guards. But Sinonis 
and Rhodanes eat the honey, are thrown into a trance by 
it, and again elude their enemies' vengeance by this seem- 
ing death. They soon awake, but only to witness a brother 
poison a brother. They are accused of this crime, are 
acquitted by the suicide of the guilty one, and find shelter 
afterward with a robber, whose house is straightway burned 
by the royal troops. The pair escape by claiming to be 
ghosts, occupy a newly made tomb, and are again supposed 
to be corpses. Captured at last, they attempt suicide by 
poison, but swallow only a sleeping potion. Sinonis then 
stabs herself with a sword. Her despair moves their captor 
to pity, and he sends them to the island of Aphrodite in 



50 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

the Euphrates, where Sinonis' wound is healed, and where 
Rhodanes is befriended by the priestess, to whose son, 
killed by a poisonous fly hidden in a rose, he bears a close 
resemblance. But pursued once more, they leave the 
island, kill one of the king's guards, and other people are 
by mistake made prisoners in their place. 

Sinonis now becomes jealous, and leaves Rhodanes, kills 
a man, is arrested, but is set free by a general pardon of 
prisoners. All kinds of murders, suicides, and buryings- 
alive now for a time give a zest to the fortunes of the 
minor characters. A daughter of the priestess of Aphro- 
dite is taken for Sinonis and sent to Garmus. Sinonis' 
father comes upon Rhodanes' dog, which has just made a 
partial meal of one whole man and the half of a woman. 
The other half Sinonis' father buries for his daughter and 
so inscribes on the tombstone. Rhodanes now comes up 
and is about to kill himself on the grave, when he learns of 
his error from Sinonis' rival. Sinonis next appears and 
proceeds to exterminate the rival, but Rhodanes seizes the 
sword she wields, and Sinonis rushes away again in anger. 
All the actors finally fall into Garmus' power — save Sinonis, 
who marries the King of Syria — and a general execution is 
ordered. But in the midst of the latter festivity, Garmus is 
informed of Sinonis' doings, and invites Rhodanes to leave 
his own execution and lead the king's army into Syria. Our 
hero naturally accepts the proposition, defeats the Syrian 
king, regains Sinonis, and ends by becoming king in Bab- 
ylon, as a little bird had once indeed foretold. So virtue 
is rewarded at the end, vice is punished, and all is well. 

It will no doubt be conceded on all sides that the reward 
of the virtuous in the Babylonica came none too early. 
And it may also be subject to debate whether those are indeed 
the truly good, who indulge their higher natures in thefts 
of the sneak variety — we omitted to mention that Sinonis 
was first arrested for offering grave clothes in the mar- 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 51 

kets of Mesopotamia — in highway robberies, murders 
of the guileless, and general devastation of an unhappy 
country. But it is evident that Jamblichus considered his 
hero and heroine as examples of persecuted virtue, and 
it is also plain that they really were persecuted. Hence, 
admitting the persecution, we will also allow the virtue, and 
rejoice in the final ruin of the rascally Garmus, and the 
occasional destruction of the satellites whom he commis- 
sioned to hunt our lovers, and whom he executed in the 
good old Oriental way when they returned without any 
fruits of their labors. It is also possible that public 
morality in Syria of the second century is not the morality 
professed in the Europe of the nineteenth. As for the hero, 
Rhodanes, he surely merited a throne, if for nothing else 
than for having gone through a wilderness of adventures, 
which must have become extremely monotonous from their 
resemblance to one another, and for having been endowed 
with the strength of mind not to commit suicide, when he 
had so many examples of that mild sin before his eyes. 
Still we must not forget that we do not possess the original 
of the Babylonica, but only an abridgment of its most 
interesting parts — interesting at least to Photius — and that 
the learned Byzantine may have suppressed a few scenes 
of tenderness and charity. For all he gives us is gore, 
and hate, and jealousy, and man leaping at the throat of 
his brother man. Jamblichus confesses his indebtedness 
to Asiatic sources for his material, a civilization where refine- 
ment was but a veneer on barbarism, and where luxury 
seems rather to have intensified the brute in humanity. So 
after all Photius may have interpreted his author rightly, 
who in all his characteristics is a genuine Greek novelist, 
and shows many of the ordinary traits of his class, though 
too one-sided to fairly represent it. One or two of his epi- 
sodes, the bees defending the fugitives, or the dog man- 
gling the unrecognizable carcass, have survived in literature, 



52 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

and re-appear many centuries later in the poets of the 
Italian decadence, where they are most faithfully copied by 
the father of Marinism, the Cavalier Marino. 

Let us delay no longer with this writer, whom we know 
only at second hand, but proceed to examine the work of 
another who has come down to us in the original text, and 
concerning whose talents and methods there is no room for 
doubt. This author is a certain Xenophon, and he comes 
from Ephesus in Asia Minor. He may have written at the 
beginning of the third century. Possibly in imitation of 
Jamblichus, he calls his production Ephesiaca, after his 
native town. With Xenophon we find ourselves in the 
usual locality of the Greek novel, the shores and islands of 
the eastern Mediterranean. He gives also the conventional 
account of the meeting, separation, and perils of his 
favorite characters, and in all other respects may be con- 
sidered a fair sample of the novelist of his day. But there 
is one reservation to be made in regard to him, and to our 
judgment on his work. The text of the Ephesiaca is very 
concise, dry, and devoted to the bare statement of facts, so 
that we must wonder again whether it is not an abstract of 
a novel rather than the novel itself. 

The lovely Anthia and the stalwart Habrocomas, whose 
youthful pastime it had been to scoff at Eros and to 
despise the power of that god, meet one day by chance in 
the temple of Diana at Ephesus. In one quick mutual 
glance the offended deity finds himself avenged, for most 
violent love immediately inflames the heart of damsel and 
swain. Perplexed by the strangeness of their children's 
new mode of life, subjected to the sway of the passion, the 
anxious parents consult Apollo's dread oracle, and by it 
are informed that the pair are to be married, and then 
sent off to suffer and endure until the god of love shall 
be appeased. The oracle is obeyed. Habrocomas weds 
Anthia, and they start on their obligatory wedding journey. 



tea 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 53 

They first visit Rhodes. On leaving that island, however, 
they are captured by pirates, and carried to Tyre. Now 
trouble begins in earnest. The charms of both hero and 
heroine are such as to excite undesirable affections in the 
breasts of their captors. They are separated from each 
other and, apart, undergo many hardships on land and sea. 
The number of their hairbreadth escapes is to be placed 
at no small figure. Anthia, seized by a fresh supply of 
pirates, is offered matrimony by their leader, but curiously 
enough she prefers suicide. The poison she takes for that 
end fortunately proves to be a sleeping draught, and Anthia, 
supposed to be dead and buried, awakes in her tomb, 
deserts it, and after many hardships reaches Alexandria. 

Meanwhile Habrocomas has been in his turn tormented 
by suitors. One of them, whom he firmly refuses, accuses 
him falsely of a murder, and the authorities crucify him in 
due season on the banks of the Nile. But the sun god, 
moved to succor, stirs up a great wind, which blows the 
cross into the river and saves the victim. The governor 
next tries a funeral pyre on our hero, but the Nile itself 
comes to the rescue and extinguishes the fire. These 
physical phenomena induce sufficient delay in the execution 
to enable Habrocomas to prove at last his innocence. He 
is set at liberty and begins a search for Anthia, who by this 
time is also on his track. A mutual pursuit ensues, which 
is not only enlivened by many perils, but also proves an 
excellent exercise in geography. Italy, Sicily, and the 
larger part of the Mediterranean are visited by one after 
the other. Finally both come once more to Rhodes, where 
they are separately recognized by their old and trusty 
servants, and are reunited in the temple of Apollo. They 
now return to Ephesus, erect tombs to the memory of their 
parents, whom their prolonged absence had driven to 
suicide, and, having been faithful to each other through all 
their perils, live happy ever after. 



54 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

This summary of Xenophon's pleasing tale does not by 
any means exhaust its contents. For with amiable thought- 
fulness our novelist has supplemented the story of the trials 
and triumphs of Habrocomas and Anthia, which form 
what we may call his principal plot, with a subplot in which 
the fortunes of their domestics, Leukon and Rhode, are 
epitomized. He has done even better. The most at- 
tractive episode of his novel is the autobiography of an old 
fisherman, whom Habrocomas finds in Sicily. The former 
was a native of Lacedaemon, and there had fallen in love 
with a maiden and had fled with her, dressed as a boy, on 
the very night her parents were to marry her to another. 
Many blissful years had the lovers passed in Sicily, though 
ever exposed to poverty and want ; and when the wife 
died her body, preserved by the skill of Egyptian art, 
remained in the hut which had so long been her dwelling, to 
recall to her lover the happy days of youth. To the eyes 
of Habrocomas the body was old, shriveled, and no better 
than a mummy, but in the sight of the husband it was 
ever the blushing maiden who had forsaken all for him so 
many years ago. There is no more graceful idyl in classi- 
cal literature. Apart from this digression, however, the 
Ephesiaca makes but slight allusions to the tender side of 
human nature. Its adventures are thoroughly common- 
place, and center around Habrocomas' experience with 
robbers and Anthia's stratagem to preserve her good name. 
The style of the book is also plain and concise, and on the 
whole it would seem as though Xenophon held his material 
in greater esteem than the manner in which he pre- 
sented it. 

The Ephesiaca, however, proved to be a popular story, 
and subsequent novels borrowed many of its inventions. 
Among their imitations the mediaeval tale of Apollonius of 
Tyre holds a prominent place. The lost Greek version of 
this novel may be placed shortly after the Ephesiaca, or as 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 55 

far back as the third century, while the Latin translation, 
by which we may trace the second step in its history, is 
undoubtedly as early as the fifth. Gower, in his Confessio 
AtnatittSy and Shakspere, in the play often assigned to him, 
Pericles, Prince of Tyre y have made the substance of 
Apollonius so familiar to English readers that we would 
gladly be rid of an analysis of it at this time. 

But in its passage from Greek into Latin, and on its way 
from antiquity to the Renaissance, this old novel of the 
Sophists naturally borrowed something from the new sur- 
roundings in which it found itself. One evidence of this 
modification is the Christian coloring it has assumed, instead 
of the conventional paganism which was a feature of the 
kind in the Alexandrian epoch. The addition of all that 
concerns King Antiochus and his daughter, an episode 
having no real connection with the rest of the story, is also 
a device of some later reviser; and should it be argued that 
these adaptations are not external, but essential, and that 
Apollonius may never have had a Greek original of the 
period to which it is commonly referred, we may call to 
witness the real plot of the legend. There you see a fisher- 
man, who befriends the hero, as his colleague befriended 
the hero of the Ephesiaca. There you read of the triumph 
of the innocence of Apollonius' daughter, which resembles 
the triumph of Anthia, of the attempt on her life by a slave, 
and of her rescue from a tomb by pirates, experiences un- 
dergone by Xenophon's heroine, while many other adven- 
tures in Apollonms are the stock ones of the Greek novel. 

If Apollonius of Tyre is truly an Alexandrian story, it 
brings up a point of considerable literary importance. For, 
so far as we have any knowledge, this legend is the only 
complete novel of antiquity which was known to mediaeval 
Christendom, where it was exceedingly popular, as may 
be inferred from the number of manuscripts in which it is 
preserved, and the translations which turned it from Latin 



56 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

into the vernacular of the new peoples. In France it 
was made over in the twelfth century into an epic, Jour- 
dain de Blaie, and connected with the heroic cycle of 
Charlemagne. In Spain, the poem Apollonio, of the thir- 
teenth century, seems to be based on another French 
version, now lost ; while in England, where it was destined 
to take on so many literary forms, it exists in an Anglo- 
Saxon translation which is supposed to have been made 
before the Norman conquest. The popularity which Apol- 
lonius enjoyed, being so great and so general — it even re- 
turned into Greek in the fifteenth century and revisited at 
last the land of its birth — it could hardly have failed to 
exert by its plan and composition, so superior to the art of 
the Middle Ages, a most notable influence on the budding 
novelists of' the time, and may have even served to shape 
the order and arrangement of the prose fiction of those 
centuries. While this influence is necessarily conjectural, 
though wholly in the ordinary run of things, it is not a con- 
jecture, but a fact, that the romans d'aventure began with a 
subject borrowed from the East, and from a degenerate de- 
scendant of the Greco-Roman novels; and the part which the 
romansd'aventure played in the make-up of the modern novel 
has been already more than hinted at here. There is in the 
particular version of Apollonius found in the Gesta Roma- 
norum, a genuine survival of the Sophists' art in the 
description of the swooning heroine, though this scene 
was no doubt eclipsed in the eyes of mediaeval spectators 
by the fabulous treasures of the hero, and the great natural 
gifts of Tharsia, additions of a more childish age than that 
of the falling Empire. But the fact that even one care- 
fully detailed episode is still retained in the tale, after so 
many vicissitudes of time, goes far toward proving the au- 
thority which a well-proportioned story, containing an 
elaborate plot, must have exercised over the untrained 
compilers of early European literature. Perhaps the 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 57 

Greek novel, through this extant member of unknown 
authorship, sustained the same relation to mediaeval 
fiction as Aristotle did to mediaeval philosophy. And this 
may be suggested without any intention of flattering the 
sons of Hellas in either case. 

The attitude of Apollonius of Tyre toward the fiction of 
the Middle Ages was repeated in the literature of the 
Renaissance by another Greek novel, the most celebrated 
of its race, Heliodorus' Theagenes and Chariclea, or (to keep 
the same form of title which has obtained among those 
already mentioned) the Ethiopica, after the native country 
of the heroine. The author of this best of Greek romances 
states that he is a Phoenician, an inhabitant of Emesa, in 
Syria. He has been often confounded with the bishop, 
Heliodorus. But the whole trend of his novel is rather 
pagan than Christian, and, like the Ephesiaca, it seems to 
be written in praise of the sun god, Helios. Still the writer 
may have been the pious bishop, for all that we know to 
the contrary, and his work may have been the offspring of 
a youthful indulgence in romantic notions, for which after 
years beheld a bitter repentance. Not that there is any- 
thing to be ashamed of in its make-up or plan. The 
episodes are higher in tone than the events of the average 
Greek novel, though primitive Christian zeal might rigidly 
condemn the favor in which the gods are held and the 
magic arts which enter so largely into the action. As fof 
plan, it follows the approved method of the rhetoricians, 
plunging the reader at once into the middle of the story and 
explaining the situation later. Also its parts are well 
arranged and proportioned ; and though the romance 
is by far the longest of its class, the author's art in the 
disposition of his matter and the development of his plot 
is such as to keep up the interest in his narrative and 
justify the reputation he gained among his countrymen, 
and which he held down to the end of the Eastern Empire. 



58 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

Therefore we are not surprised when the revival of Greek 
learning in western Europe reached, as the last subject of 
interest, the Alexandrian novel, that the fame of Theagenes 
and Chariclea passed beyond the educated classes and pene- 
trated to the people. It furnished Amyot with his pioneer 
translation into French in 1547, and was done not much 
later into the other important modern vernaculars. 

The curtain rises on Theagenes and Chariclea seated by 
the strand of the sea, near the Nile Delta, in the midst of 
corpses. They had been shipwrecked and Theagenes had 
afterward been wounded in a conflict with the pirates who 
had worsted his companions. While Chariclea, thus deso- 
late but in sound physical condition, is lamenting his in- 
juries, the two are seized by a fresh band of robbers and 
carried away. They pass the following night in listening 
to the woful account of Cnemon, an Athenian, who tells how 
his step-mother, when he refused her proferred favors, per- 
secuted him, and how she committed suicide when her 
villainy was made known. The following day our hero 
and heroine — who pretend to the robbers, for their greater 
safety, that they are brother and sister — are separated 
from each other, and start on the conventional round of 
adventures. 

Having thus safely launched his story, Heliodorus 
brings in the previous history of his pair by introducing an 
aged priest, Calasiris, who relates to Cnemon how he had 
brought up Chariclea from infancy, how when a maiden 
grown she had met Theagenes at a festival, how mutual 
love with all its joys and its longings had taken possession 
of them, and how they had finally started on their wander- 
ings in obedience to Apollo's oracle. In the description of 
the festival where the lovers met, and where Theagenes 
won a race and received the palm of victory from Chariclea, 
as well as in the delineation of the ravages of love on the 
maiden, our author has passed by far all his rivals. His 



_^ bh m m m n 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 59 

skill also in the dialogues between his characters, and his 
devices to keep alive the interest of the narration, reveal 
an artistic and practical sense, which makes the novel 
a readable one even at the present day. In his whole 
exposition it is clear that he has studied the stage to good 
purpose. He has chosen from among the writers of 
tragedy many apt similes and metaphors, while Homer 
comes in for a share in his admiration, and the Greek his- 
torians, especially Herodotus. Finally Calasiris' account is 
interrupted by the arrival of Chariclea, and thus the first 
part of the novel is brought to a close. 

In the second part the lovers journey along by the banks 
of the Nile, sometimes together, more often apart, and are 
exposed to many dangers, all of which they surmount in 
the optimistic manner to which we have by this time be- 
come accustomed. Magic is introduced to add a new 
incentive to our curiosity, and further material is furnished 
to the narrative by the recital of the fortunes of Calasiris 
and his family. At last, after many hardships, the perse- 
cuted pair reach Ethiopia, and are made prisoners by its 
inhabitants. Being spoils of war they are condemned to 
death, but the Gymnosophists, who in that region formed 
a sect opposed to human sacrifices, contrive to delay the 
offering until the sovereigns of the land have time to 
recognize in Chariclea their own daughter. Although of 
black parents she was born white through the influence of 
a marble statue, and her mother, the queen, fearing her 
husband's jealousy should this fact be known, had con- 
signed her in the good old-fashioned way to the care of 
nature. From this care a diplomat had rescued her and 
had handed her over to Calasiris, at the lucky age of seven. 
Theagenes is also set free on the entreaty of his bride, the 
omens are interpreted to be unfavorable to human sacri- 
fices, and these are finally abolished throughout the realm 
of Ethiopia. So not only is the happy union of the lovers 



6o GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

the culmination of the story, but also a moral reform has 
been accomplished through them, and the name of the 
Gymnosophists is magnified. 

Aside from its lively narration and its well-drawn descrip- 
tions, Theagenes and Char idea merits, for many reasons, a 
permanent place in the history of novel-writing. It will be 
noticed from the abstract given above, and which presents 
only the leading features of the work, that Heliodorus, unlike 
his fellow-novelists, is not melodramatic in his plot, and 
does not insist in his happy ending on the punishment of 
the heavy villain as well as the triumph of the innocent. In 
this respect he shows his reliance on the incidents of his 
work to excite the interest of his readers, and does not 
merely contrast virtue with vice. This attitude alone is a 
marked advance over what had preceded him, but it is not 
the only merit of the book. For there is, running quietly 
through the novel, and becoming prominent in the final 
scenes, the eulogy of a sect whose cause the author had 
espoused, and the justification of their doctrine by the aboli- 
tion, in Ethiopia, of human sacrifices. It would be unwise 
to lay too much stress on this extraneous matter, which has 
very little to do with the real plot, but it deserves at least 
a passing mention, since it is the first example in fiction of 
a moral argument made agreeable by a tale. In later times 
we have been quite familiarized with such side purposes of 
novelists, and many romances have, indeed, no other excuse 
for existence than that they are the traditional sugar which 
coats the pill of some moral reform. Heliodorus does not 
make his plot subservient in any way to his doctrinal teach- 
ing, but inasmuch as he alone of the Greek writers of fiction 
has any idea other than that of pleasing his audience this 
beginning of dogmatic story-telling is interesting to note. 

Heliodorus was not content with being a literary artist 
and a defender of morality ; he also endeavored to give 
to his narrative an air of probability. In spite of the won- 



■HM 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 61 

derful adventures and deeds of superhuman daring which 
he relates, he succeeds oftentimes in making his episodes 
lifelike and actual. For instance, Calasiris' long rehearsal 
of past events to Cnemon is constantly broken in upon by 
the latter's questions, which, in turn, give rise to many ex- 
planations and descriptions. Thus one has the feeling of 
participating in the action. Frequently, in depicting his 
scenes, the author gives them a finish of detail which would 
not put to shame the most sensitive modern realist. 
When Cnemon — to cite an illustration of this point — sup- 
poses that Thisbe, the tool of his step-mother in his con- 
demnation, and whose murdered body he had just found, 
has come to life again, he hastens in terror to regain his 
own room. And the novelist thus describes his mishaps 
while a prey to fear : " Now his foot stumbled ; now he fell 
against the wall, and now against the lintels of the door ; 
sometimes he struck his head against utensils hanging from 
the ceiling ; at last, with much difficulty and after many 
wanderings, he reached his own apartment and threw him- 
self upon the bed. His body trembled and his teeth 
chattered. . ." 

We have not yet done with the good qualities of the 
greatest of Greek novelists. We have already spoken of 
his knowledge of classical literature. He was also a 
romanticist as well and believed in local color. Whether 
he makes Delphi, the Nile Delta, Memphis; ancient Thebes, 
or Ethiopia the setting for the events he narrates, he pre- 
serves admirably the characteristic features of each place, 
and portrays with careful hand the customs of the various 
peoples, the games* of Greece, or the heathen sacrifices of 
the Upper Nile. He further justifies his title to romanticism 
by a genuine love of nature both on sea and land, and in 
his descriptions of scenery he forsakes the conventionalism 
of his class for the teachings of his own observation. So 
his language is quite brilliant and poetical, especially in the 



62 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

last half of his work. He also displays a fondness for folk- 
lore, which he ingeniously mingles with book learning. 
Best of all, his incidents are clean and lacking in the cus- 
tomary coarseness of the age. 

Heliodorus' exposition of the action, and the skill with 
which he delays the solution of the plot, and keeps up our 
interest in it, have already been remarked upon. But we 
have not said that he sometimes jests, a rare thing in the 
dry and sober times of Greco-Roman literature, and that he 
also betrays a great fondness for popular etymologies, as 
Homer from 6 pttjpoZ {the ihigh\ and the Nile from vkrj 
ikvS {new soil), brought down by that river in its inunda- 
tions. His device of causing Chariclea to be born white 
on account of the statue of Andromeda, which was placed 
in the queen's apartments, is another striking evidence of 
his simple delight in received traditions, while her royal 
parentage, like the aristocratic origin of the heroes of the 
epic stories, may show that such legends still lingered 
among the people. 

But Heliodorus is by no means perfect as a writer, nor is 
he to be taken as a model for moderns. Though he is 
readable to-day, he is so on account of his own originality 
and variety, and in spite of his likeness to the other writers 
of the Sophist school. For he resembles them in many 
particulars : in the introduction of episodes foreign to the 
plot, in the unnecessary obstacles to the progress of the 
action, in the long-winded descriptions, in the orations, 
letters, rhetorical phrases, dreams and visions, in the 
monstrous crimes, in the perils suddenly overcome, and 
above all in the absence of any psychological analysis of 
character. To be sure the bearing of Chariclea throughout 
the story, and particularly at the end when she deliberates 
on how to rescue Theagenes from immolation, gives her the 
attributes of courage, skill, and refinement of feeling, which 
are not sufficient, however, to make up a character in the 



H* 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 63 

modern sense of the word. Theagenes, on the other hand, 
is a poor stick in what he does, and far inferior to his 
sweetheart in even the supposed manly qualities. There- 
fore, in summing up our author's merits and defects it is 
only necessary to say, that so long as he adhered to his 
own talent he rose above his class. When he yielded to the 
fashion of the times, he fell back into the commonplace. 
And at no point is this weakness to be more regretted than 
in connection with his heroine. For a few more touches of 
detail and a slight development of the traits he seems to 
have given her in his own mind, would have created for 
posterity a sympathetic and lovable type of generous 
womanhood. 

But we have long rung the changes on Heliodorus and 
his contribution to our favorite kind of literature, and the 
fleeting hour and lengthening chapter warn us to hurry on 
to the mighty men who follow him in Sophistic story. For 
he had many imitators in his own day as well as at the 
time of the Renaissance. Foremost among the former was 
Achilles Tatius of Alexandria, who flourished not far from 
the middle of the fifth century, and who was the author of 
Clitophon and Leucippe. Nothing else is known about him, 
though from his few allusions to the gods, which had be- 
come a stock feature in the Greek novels, it is surmised 
that he may have been a Christian. 

Clitophon and Leucippe begins with a description of a 
painting of the rape of Europa, which the author finds 
frescoed on the walls of Sidon. As he stands admiring the 
picture and meditating on the might of Eros, he is accosted 
by a youth who proceeds to unfold his sorrows to him. This 
youth is Clitophon. He tells how he, a native of Tyre, had 
been affianced by his father Hippias to his step-sister, Calli- 
gone, and how at the same time a vision had forewarned 
him of future ills. Soon after, his cousin Leucippe takes 
ship from Byzantium, and no sooner reaches Tyre than she 



64 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

inflames Clitophon with love's fires. She likewise burns to 
a considerable extent. Their imprudence soon reveals to 
their family the state of their affections, and they fly from 
punishment by eloping over the sea. But they suffer ship- 
wreck on the coast of Egypt, and are there captured by 
pirates and separated. 

Now the real adventures begin, and Achilles exerts him- 
self to supply novelties to his audience. He makes Clito- 
phon a distant witness of the murder of Leucippe by the 
robbers, and her burial. Coming up to the place where her 
grave is made he is on the point of killing himself, when 
the ever ready slave interferes, draws Leucippe alive from 
the pit, and they then discover that she had put on as 
protection a sack of false intestines, and that the pirates 
had used, without knowing it, a theatrical dagger, which 
they had found in an actor's wardrobe cast up in the wreck- 
age. Soldiers now arrive on the scene. Their chief be- 
comes enamored of Leucippe, but she is made insane by a 
love draught. 

Pirates finally steal her and put to sea with her. Clito- 
phon follows after and sees them behead a woman, whose 
body they throw overboard. This he picks up and mourns 
over as the body of his mistress. He then returns to Alex- 
andria, where a rich widow from Ephesus falls in love with 
him, and persuades him to accompany her home. At her 
country house near Ephesus he finds Leucippe employed 
as a domestic. Their meeting is not of the most joyful 
nature, and to add to the gloom Thersander, the widow's 
former husband, comes back from the dead, bullies Clito- 
phon, and makes love to Leucippe. He also attempts to 
obtain legal redress for his marital wrongs and commences 
a long trial, which is not without amusing incidents. The 
suit ends in the application of the common test of chastity 
to the lovers. They both survive it and, certain of each 
other's innocence, are reconciled at last. 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 65 

Clitophon and Leucippe contains some redeeming feat- 
ures, even if it is not remarkable for its originality. The 
mistaken likenesses had already been employed in the 
Babylofitca, and the majority of the episodes it presents 
existed before Achilles soldered them together. But if he 
is not to be mentioned for his powers of invention he at 
least may lay claim to a facility for adaptation — as in his 
borrowings from the drama— and to a faculty for descrip- 
tion. He cleverly divides his story into three parts by 
means of the locality where the scene of each is laid, 
Tyre, the Nile Delta, and Ephesus. But his machinery for 
introducing these changes of place is the artificial one of 
the whim of the goddess of fate, Tyche. Achilles imitated 
Heliodorus in many details, yet he did not present the 
morality of the great novelist's incidents, and often was 
coarse and broad. His story is really an autobiography, 
but the hero, who tells it, gives himself by no means an 
attractive character. Like Theagenes he is weak and 
irresolute, and allows himself to be cuffed about at will by 
the rough Thersander, who is a kind of braggart, ruling his 
household like a despot. Leucippe is also uninteresting, 
and only the lovesick widow, Melitta, seems to possess 
any personality at all. 

But while Achilles thus neglects to emphasize the traits 
of his heroes, he shows great fondness for the traditional 
speeches and letters, a genuine zeal for discussions on love 
and woman, also for monologues and soliloquies. He de- 
lights in displaying his erudition, quotes frequently from 
Homer, tells stories taken from mythology and from the 
fables of iEsop, is familiar with the fortunes of Hero and 
Leander, and can interest the student of folk-lore with his 
account of the trial of chastity and his versions of popular 
tales. In scientific statements, pure and simple, he is to be 
placed among the fantastic zoologists, as in his descriptions 
of the phoenix and hippopotamus. 



66 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

Still we shall not forget his praiseworthy effort to delin- 
eate the gradual growth of love in Clitophon, instead of 
relying on the sudden eruptions of the hitherto sleeping 
volcanic desires by which his predecessors saved themselves 
so much bother. On all occasions he is on the alert for 
descriptions, and in developing them he practices all kinds 
of style, from the most simple and direct to the most re- 
dundant. A good specimen of Euphuistic art is his picture 
of Leucippe's grief on meeting with Thersander : " Upon 
hearing his voice, Leucippe burst into tears, and appeared 
even more charming than before, for tears give permanency 
and increased expression to the eyes, either rendering them 
more disagreeable, or improving them if pleasing, for in 
that case the dark iris, fading into a lighter hue, resembles, 
when moistened with tears, the head of a gently bubbling 
fount ; the white and black, growing in brilliancy from the 
moisture which floats over the surface, assume the mingled 
shades of the violet and narcissus, and the eye appears as 
smiling through the tears which are confined within its 
lids." 

A passage like this fairly bursts with the pride of word 
pictures, and we can vibrate in reading it with the self- 
satisfaction of the honest Achilles in penning it. In the 
same manner he admires his own acquaintance with the 
Greek and Oriental traditions, with which he filled out his 
somewhat meager plot, and beams with ecstatic joy when 
he hits on a good invention, as he sometimes does. For 
he is not lacking in observation, and some of his scenes 
have justified the labor he spent on them. In Clitophon and 
Leucippe appears that stratagem which Shakspere has 
made familiar to us, of concealing an army by the branches 
of trees, which the soldiers carry with them. The book 
furnished also that episode, which Tasso has made famous 
by his Aminta, where Clitophon succeeds in stealing a kiss 
from his mistress by pretending that a bee had stung his 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 67 

lips, and entreating her to heal them by murmuring incan- 
tations over them. Achilles also excels in descriptions of 
the works of art his hero runs across, in analyses of the 
senses, and in the stock exercises of the Sophist school, 
particularly in the storm at sea. Consequently when his 
work reappeared in the Renaissance it met with a flattering 
reception, was translated from a Latin version into both 
Italian and French, in the third quarter of the sixteenth 
century, while its more exciting episodes were appropriated 
by the Spaniard Nunez de Reinoso to form the substance 
of his story, Clareo y Florisea, which saw the light in 1552. 
There remains to be mentioned but one more novel of 
erotic adventure belonging to the Sophist school of the 
Greco-Roman period. It is the story of Chcereas and Cal- 
lirrhoe y and was written by a certain Chariton, a rhetorician 
of Aphrodisia, in Caria, who perhaps was a contemporary 
of Achilles Tatius. His work, however, is much more in 
sympathy with bur modern feeling, and differs in essential 
respects quite decidedly from the other fictitious narratives 
of the time. Chariton begins in the usual way by placing 
the first meeting of his couple in a temple, during the fes- 
tival of Aphrodite at Syracuse, in Sicily. Love straight- 
way ensues and marriage. But before many days have 
passed the demon of jealousy gains access to the husband's 
heart. In a fit of madness he tramples on the prostrate 
body of his wife and flees from the house, leaving her for 
dead. She is carried to a tomb, which robbers soon break 
into, and finding her alive steal her away to Miletus, where 
she is sold into slavery. She wins her master's love and 
marries him in order to save her husband's son from a 
slave's fate. Meanwhile, Chaereas, discovering the theft, 
has set out for Miletus also, but has been captured by 
the Persians. Callirrhoe, however, supposes him to have 
been killed by his captors, and accordingly celebrates his 
funeral. At this ceremony the satrap of Caria, Mithridates, 



68 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

first sees her and falls violently in love with her. Some 
time afterward the satrap finds Chaereas held as a slave in 
Caria, discovers his relation to Callirrhoe, and unites with 
him in sending letters and presents to her. Her new hus- 
band, Dionysius — who throughout the whole narrative is 
seen to be an honorable, upright man — complains of the 
satrap to the king. All parties are summoned to Babylon to 
appear before the great Artaxerxes, who no sooner sees the 
heroine than he too yields to Cupid's shafts. He therefore' 
delays his decision in the case until a revolt in Egypt calls 
away his army, and with it the ladies of the court. Chaereas, 
hearing a false report that his wife has been ceded to her 
second husband, now joins the Egyptian army, leads it 
against Tyre, conquers the Persian fleet, and takes the 
island of Ardo, where he finds Callirrhoe and learns from 
her all that has passed. Overcome by the generosity and 
highmindedness of Dionysius, the first husband acknowl- 
edges in an eloquent epistle the magnanimity of the second, 
dismisses his followers, and returns with Callirrhoe to 
Syracuse, where the whole city comes out in festal array to 
meet them. 

Thus the Greek novels of erotic adventure end with a 
story, which is more natural, more definite, more modern 
in a word, than any of its companions. With the retention 
of much of the old mechanism — apparent death of the 
heroine, pirates, a storm at sea, slavery, power of a 
divinity, which is here Aphrodite and not Eros or Tyche — 
we find many new springs of action in the plot. Jealousy, 
which had already appeared, to be sure, in other novels, 
particularly in the Babylonica, takes on here the brutal 
shape of a criminal court case, while it is the point of 
departure for the adventures. In the development of his 
plan Chariton takes especial pains to have it proceed 
simply and logically, without dallying with delaying 
episodes, though he is very partial to monologues and 



—^ 



GREEK NOVEL, AUTHORS AND WORKS. 69 

dialogues, which indeed form the best part of his compo- 
sition. The interest in the fortunes of his lovers increases 
steadily up to the happy ending, and this improvement has 
been brought about by merely making the writer's art sub- 
servient to his plan. In the delineation of character he 
differs widely from his colleagues, not in defining the 
attributes of his central figures, but in developing the 
traits of Dionysius. This prince is shown to be a kind, 
noble, and just man, far above the egoists by whom he is 
surrounded, and his deeds of charity and self-forgetful- 
ness cast in the shade the deceit, violence, and sensuality 
which stamp the average hero of the school. 

But Chariton's greatest originality lies in his pictures 
of court life, under a sovereign known to history. His 
historical exactness is, of course, not to be taken seriously ; 
still in his introduction of real personages, and in the 
citation of actual events in their lives, he can claim the 
merit of having fixed the time of his plot, which the other 
Greek novelists had no notion of doing. The whole ten- 
dency of the last half of his work is in fact towards the gen- 
eration of the historical novel. This bent is further empha- 
sized by his fondness for the historians, Xenophon and 
Thucydides,who rival Homer in the number and importance 
of allusions which he makes to them. How potently to the 
development of an historical school in fiction the story of 
Chcereas and Callirrhoe might have contributed, had Tyche so 
ordered, we have no means of judging. For the circum- 
stances which had been favorable to the rise and growth 
of the Greek novel were now passing away, and Chariton, 
instead of occupying the enviable position of the head of a 
new school in romance, was condemned by fate to be con- 
tent with closing the old one. The remaining novel of the 
Alexandrian period was begotten by a sentiment entirely 
different from the idea which prevailed in the tales of 
erotic adventure. 



7° GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

There can be no reasonable doubt, when we consider 
the taste of the Greco-Romans, as to which of the two 
classes of novels they produced was most in favor among 
them. The proportion among the survivals, six on erotic 
adventure to one pastoral, is a sufficiently plain guide in this 
respect, though the destruction of manuscripts, already 
alluded to, deprives any conclusion of absolute certainty. 
The novels of adventure corresponded more to the trading, 
mercantile spirit of the age and manifestly appealed to the 
class of merchants and traders. Their flavor is decidedly 
bourgeois, even with Chariton, who tries to acquaint his 
readers with that life of royal courts, which no longer was 
known within the limits of the Roman Empire. Also in the 
rise of the novel of adventure we may discover a period 
of preparation, and in its development a variety of scene 
and plot which clearly point to a wide constituency. And 
the manners it portrays cannot be alien to the age, even 
if they are not wholly representative of it. 

On the other hand the sole pastoral novel of antiquity 
possesses but few features which may be regarded as typ- 
ical of its time and place. In its sentiment and feeling it 
appeals entirely to the views of a select few who held them- 
selves aloof from the stirring world of trade. The exis- 
tence it sketches is thoroughly artificial. Furthermore it 
has neither antecedents nor successors. Not that the 
pastoral idea was unknown to the ancients, for from the 
midst of their luxury and refinement they looked back to 
a Golden Age, in which no crime dwelt, whence toil was 
absent, and where all thoughts were pure and innocent. 
This longing for an ideal state often affected ancient liter- 
ature. Inasmuch as the men of the Golden Age were 
pastoral in their occupations, watered their cattle and tended 
their flocks, it was a literary vein worth working to transfer 
their ideas and attributes to the shepherds of the Greek 
decadence and the herdsmen of an Augustan era. So 



*" 



GREEIC NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 7* 

Theocritus sang in Sicily of rural delights and rustic pas- 
times, and Virgil on the banks of the Po extolled the 
blessings of country simplicity and peace, when contrasted 
with the cares and turmoils of him who dwells in the great 
centers of human activity. Thus the pastoral idea had 
received an artificial quickening and had become perhaps 
a fashionable theme in the more elegant and doubting 
classes of society. 

To such a social caste the one pastoral novel of the 
Greeks belongs. It calls away from the world's corruption 
and complex civilization to the purity of nature. It illus- 
trates, this purity by the infancy and youth of two beings, 
whoselvocations are pastoral and whose interests are wholly 
in each\other, free from all notion of worldly gain or ambi- 
tion. The scenery is placed on an island, Lesbos, in the 
blue ^Egean. The landscapes are the rural pictures of the 
great poets. But in its setting alone does Daphnis and 
Chloe remind one of Virgil, or Theocritus ; nor can any 
connection be traced from it to them. The novel stands 
by itself without sponsor and without apologist. The 
notion of absolute innocence, both mental and physical, 
which is its theme, is peculiar to itself, and in the constant 
insistence on this notion there is a lack of freshness, a dry- 
ness, an effort which smacks of the school and the study. 
Its elaborate composition and its anxiety for harmonious 
and flowing periods disclose beyond a question the rheto- 
rician's art. 

So when we examine closely into its substance we find 
there the conventional episodes of the novels of adventure, 
while occasional glimpses of the real life of these enervated 
generations of antiquity jar by their ugly contrast with the 
attempted artlessness of the primitive guilelessness as- 
sumed. We read of spring brooks, of summer flowers, 
autumn's vintage, and winter snows. In this framework of 
nature stand a boy and girl, young man and maiden, lovers 



72 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AMD WORKS. 

at times, friends always. And the story of their growing 
affection is told so simply ! But suddenly, without warn- 
ing, the ideal purity is violated, the peaceful narrative 
reflects shameless things as innocently as it did the 
features of unsuspecting virtue, the cloven foot of nature's 
god, the merry Pan, becomes the sign of the arch-enemy of 
man, and into this Eden crawls the serpent of human 
iniquity. Our pastoral life exists only in words, and 
nature's joys are but a pretext for a Sophist's declamation. 

The one thing certain about the origin of Daphnis and 
Chloe is that it is to be traced to the same source as the novels 
of erotic adventure. Though undoubtedly addressed to a 
more refined public than they were, it contains some of their 
material and shows many of the ear-marks of the Sophists. 
Very likely it is an aggregation of themes in use in their 
schools, which some more talented orator undertook, 
under the influence of the stories of adventure, to connect 
together and to expand into a narrative. For Longus — a 
name which has been applied to the author of the work — 
may indeed be no name at all, but merely a wrong reading 
for XoyoZ in the manuscript, and the date of the novel is 
no less uncertain than its author, being limited for no evi- 
dent reason to the second century as the earliest and the 
fifth as the latest. The book, however, shows considerable 
familiarity with the island of Lesbos, and may be therefore 
called, after the analogy of the novels of erotic adventure, 
the Lesbiaca. 

The popularity of this pastoral novel has always been so 
great that one more analysis of its contents may hardly be 
welcome. The author begins with a preface, in which he 
first gives a hasty description of a picture which represents 
the episodes of the book, and then proceeds to dedicate his 
work to the " God of Love, to the Nymphs, and to Pan." 
Thus relieved of his burden, he tells how Daphnis and 
Chloe, both foundlings, were brought up by rustics, who 



■■ ■ - 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 73 

taught them how to tend their flocks. The life they led 
together, from childhood on, developed in them mutual 
affection and the truest friendship. As they increased in 
years this affection ripened into love, a passion which, in 
their state of innocence, thoroughly bewildered them. 
Daphnis had rivals, and Chloe also, but each repelled the 
new suitors. One of Chloe's swains, the cowherd Dorco, 
plans to carry away his mistress by force, and to that end 
disguises himself in a wolf's skin ; but dogs fall upon him 
and nearly kill him before Daphnis can come to his rescue. 
Some months after this adventure a boat-load of pirates 
from Tyre steal Dorco's oxen — mortally wounding him — 
and carry away Daphnis with them to their ship. But 
Dorco, before expiring, gives Chloe his rustic pipe. She 
hurries to the strand and plays upon it. The oxen rush to 
the side of the vessel, leap overboard, and thus capsize it. 
The pirates are drowned by the weight of their armor, but 
Daphnis swims to shore. Other events follow, the most 
important of which is the capture of Chloe by some enemies 
of Daphnis, and her release through the intervention of 
Pan himself. The unsuccessful efforts of the lovers to 
gratify their physical love forms now the main theme of the 
story, while winter and autumn come and go, and land- 
scapes, rural scenes, and gardens are described, until finally 
the wealthy parents of the young shepherds appear, and 
recognize in them their own offspring through the tokens 
they had exposed with them at their birth. A wedding 
festival marks the happy ending of this rural courtship. 

Besides its eulogy of natural scenery and the glorifica- 
tion of absolute innocence, Daphnis and Chloe differs both 
in plan and make-up from the novels of erotic adventure. 
In the first place, the author tells the story himself and re- 
peats his dialogue, or what may pass for dialogue, at second 
.hand and in a narrative way. Consequently we lose the 
directness and sense of participation in the events, which 



74 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

Heliodorus, for instance, imparts to us. Again, the author 
of the pastoral has weakened his pastoral sentiment by his 
borrowings from the episodes of the other school. The 
fortunes of his lovers he has placed under the control of 
Eros instead of a rustic divinity, though Pan does appear 
at times to guard his worshipers. The introduction of 
pirates clashes with the quiet serenity of the fields and 
groves, and brings in a scene of bloodshed which is not at 
all consonant with the idea of rural emancipation from 
crime and violence. The same criticism may be made 
regarding the scenes of sensuality and corruption, which 
are peculiar to a people who studied how to violate nature 
rather than to conform to her laws. 

When all these discordant elements are put together the 
artificiality of Daphnis and Chloe is strikingly manifest. 
Still, to insist on them to the exclusion of the other senti- 
ments, which, indeed, make up the main body of the novel, 
would be doing it injustice. For the pastoral idea, when 
all deductions have been allowed, is still the overshadowing 
principle with Longus, and the only one by which he has 
exercised any influence on modern fiction. The bucolics of 
Theocritus and Virgil, who did not preach such astounding 
innocence as the Alexandrian Sophist conceived, are far 
removed from the rusticity of the Greek idyl. Yet the 
degree of development which the new views have here 
attained would seem to indicate a long series of eulogies 
on country life antecedent to the composition of Daphnis 
afid Chloe. These eulogies may have been perfected, and 
the verbal pictures of natural scenery outlined, either in the 
public schools of rhetoric or within the narrower confines of 
pastoral poetry. Ever since the time of Aristophanes and 
Plato Greek literature had delighted in extolling the charm 
of rural existence as contrasted with the complexity of urban 
life, and among the poets of the Alexandrian epoch many 
stories of shepherds had been celebrated in verse. One of 



- 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 75 

these tales concerns the shepherd Daphnis, to whom the 
invention of bucolic poetry is often ascribed, and who was 
himself a foundling, brought up by shepherds, and hating 
cities. It was widespread, and evidently furnished our 
author with the name of his hero and some of his details. 
Chloe was also a word long connected with the pastoral 
idea, and had attained common use as the surname of 
Demeter, the goddess of the fruitful field. So there was 
plenty of material at hand awaiting Longus' choice. 

As regards the manner of the novel, we have already 
cited the tendency of the Sophists to exercise the ingenuity 
of their scholars by giving them subjects for elaboration in 
rhetorical exercises. An unusually good description is the 
picture of winter in Daphnis and Chloe : " On a sudden 
heavy falls of snow blocked up the roads and shut up the 
cottagers within doors. Impetuous torrents rushed down 
from the mountains, the ice thickened, the trees seemed as 
though their branches were broken down beneath the weight 
of snow, and the whole face of the earth had disappeared 
except about the brinks of the fountains and the borders 
of the rivers." This last touch of reality indicates, by its 
observation of actual facts, something more than the artifi- 
cial ornateness of an academic oration. 

And yet we know that the rhetoricians dealt gladly in 
these scenes, for Dion Chrysostom, the celebrated orator of 
Domitian's and Trajan's reigns, extolled in one of his elab- 
orate harangues the simplicity and innocence of rural life 
in the island of Eubcea, and related the story of a huntsman 
whom he had once met on the coast of that country. In 
this oration there is the nucleus of a genuine pastoral novel, 
and Longus — if Longus it was — can hardly have been 
ignorant of it. 

Though there is much in Daphnis and Chloe which might 
seem to reveal a deep love of nature for herself alone, yet 
we are always in a state of uncertainty regarding the sin- 



76 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

cerity of the author. The question whether he really feels 
the force of his own delineations of her changing moods 
and phases, or whether these pictures are the product of a 
perfect art concealing itself, has not been solved to our 
satisfaction. The winter's landscape is both natural and 
rhetorical, and in most of the other descriptions the balance 
hangs even between nature and art. But in one of his 
most careful sketches — the plan of a pleasure garden — the 
writer clearly shows his fondness for the work of man's hands. 
In the geometrical lines of this retreat, in its regular flower- 
beds, and its studied glimpses of landscape, Longus might 
well have belonged to the age of Louis XIV, and have given 
to Le Notre the idea which the latter carried out so success- 
fully in the arrangement of the famous park at Versailles. 

But the blemishes of Daphnis and Chloe disappear in the 
contemplation of its attractions. So simple a plan and so 
excellent a composition have, perhaps, never been known 
in the history of pastoral writings. For this reason it is 
all the more strange that Longus had no successors in his 
own time, when his defects in taste and morals would be 
less apparent than they are to-day. If his success incited 
the ambition of rivals, their names and even the very men- 
tion of their works have been lost to posterity ; and Longus 
himself experienced but a slightly better fate in the cen- 
turies immediately following. Certain Byzantine authors 
of the Middle Ages would appear to have come under his 
influence, but it was not until the Renaissance, when good 
Bishop Amyot had taken him under his protection, through 
his translation of Daphnis and Chloe in 1559, that our 
Sophist's view of pastoral love and life was restored 
to pastoral writers. And even then the current of rural 
description, which looked to Virgil as its fountain head, was 
flowing too swiftly to receive any noticeable additions from 
this newly reopened source. Some of the episodes of 
Daphnis and Chloe were incorporated into the pastoral 



— - 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 77 

poetry of Italy, but they brought no particular inspiration. 
Not until the eve of the French Revolution, when the 
thoughts of mankind were reverting to an age untrammeled 
by social conventionalities, did the idea of this Greek novel 
of bygone times live again in St. Pierre's immortal idyl of 
Paul and Virginia. For whether the two stories bear any 
actual relation to each other or not, they surely represent 
similar views, and by their likenesses and contrasts they 
reveal the great changes of sentiment and feeling which 
differentiate the thought-standards of the modern world 
from the ideals of the ancient. 

To the Sophists we undoubtedly owe the existence in 
literature of the various kinds of the Greek novel, and with 
the decline of their sect it seems to have passed away. The 
causes for this death by sympathy are not hard to ascertain. 
The old Greek novel must have had, while it was among 
the people, a vigorous life. When the Sophists took it up, 
they dried up its sources of tradition and legend, and 
refined it to their own false views of sentiment and action. 
They gave it its literary form and involved it in their fall. 
Its representations of life at their hands had been too dis- 
torted, and its field of action too narrow, to raise up suc- 
cessors to their work. Besides, the end of the Alexandrian 
period saw in full possession of civil and social power the 
various sects of Christians, whose rules of conduct, whatever 
may have been their actual practice, were directly antago- 
nized by the cruelty and sensuality which formed a large pro- 
portion of these stories. The dedication also of the nov- 
els — however conventional and unmeaning it may have 
been — to some pagan deity was especially calculated to 
call out the opposition of the new religion with its increas- 
ing number of adherents. So we find that the Church at 
first forbade novels to its members, and afterward, when 
their hold was felt to be too tenacious for mere prohibition 
to have much effect, it tried to turn their influence into 



7$ GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

moral and religious channels. The same opposition, and 
the same attempt to appropriate to religion's ends the weap- 
ons of the adversary of souls, we shall find again in the 
case of the romances of chivalry in Spain of the sixteenth 
century. Therefore, we are not surprised that, after several 
centuries of vain attempts to suppress this pestilential litera- 
ture, the Greco- Roman novel should reappear as the work 
of Christian hands. Cliiophon and Leucippe, which had 
divided with Theagenes and Charidea the admiration of the 
Byzantine readers of fiction, took then to itself a sequel, 
where, maliciously enough, the unhappiness of the married 
life of the lovers is related, and in contrast with that the 
felicity of a son, whose birth came about through the re- 
pentance and baptism of his mother, and whose marital 
continence offered a stinging rebuke to the earthly passions 
of his father. This model of all virtues was at last trans- 
lated through a martyr's death. 

Photius' liking for these condemned volumes has been 
sufficiently commented upon, though Longus and Chariton 
find no place in his Myriobiblion. Many other officers of 
the Church besides Photius used to read the Alexandrian 
tales of adventure, and adapt them to their doctrinal 
aims. An instance of this is found in a sermon of the tenth 
century on "Abraham the Jew and the merchant Theodore," 
in which many adventures are related, love is replaced by 
superstition, and the moral is reached by the conversion 
of the Jew through the faith which the merchant has in the 
protecting power of the image of Christ, set up in the 
market-place of Constantinople. 

From the seventh to the tenth centuries, Byzantine lit- 
erature was entirely under the control of the Church. But 
in the eleventh century there began a short revival of learn- 
ing, extending to the capture of Constantinople by the 
companions of Villehardouin early in the thirteenth, in which 
serious efforts were put forth to restore the artistic side of 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 79 

fiction. Among the products of this Greek Renaissance 
are four works which in plot may be called novels, though 
three of the four are in metrical verse. One of these three, 
Dosicles and Rhodantes,hy Theodorus Prodromus, a monk 
of the twelfth century and a prolific writer, is modeled on 
Heliodorus. Fables, of a probable Oriental origin, fill out 
his meager plot. Another is by a disciple of Prodromus, 
Nicetas Eugenianus, whose Charicles and Drosilla — less vio- 
lent in its episodes than his master's poem — is made up from 
lyric and bucolic poets, the Anthology, and Greco-Roman 
novels. The erotic digressions of this example of com- 
posite fiction are almost limitless. Fortunately the third 
romance in verse, Aristander and Callithea, by Constantine 
Manasses, a contemporary of Prodromus, has come down 
to us only in a few moral and sententious extracts. Their 
evidence points to the usual series of extravagant and 
ever-recurring episodes. 

More important than these romances is the prose "drama," 
Hysmenias and Hysmene, in eleven books, by the philosopher 
Eustathius, whose uncertain date may be fixed somewhere 
within the twelfth century. An analysis of the contents of 
his story would not redound to any considerable edifica- 
tion of the reader, and it is enough that to say that the 
work is an imitation of Clitophon and Leucippe, though degen- 
erating often to a perhaps unconscious parody of that 
favorite novel. For the merits of Achilles are here much 
diluted and his defects very decidedly concentrated. Paint- 
ings, dreams, and persistent love-making by the heroine to 
the hero form a large part of the material. Yet in spite 
of all these insipidities, Eustathius was not only popular in 
his own day but also received early attention at the Re- 
naissance, as an Italian translation of his " drama " dating 
from 1550, a French version of 1559, and passages in 
Montemayor's Diana conclusively prove. 

From the Eastern Empire and the scrolls of Byzantine 



80 GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 

literature the Greek novel, with its imitations and ramifi- 
cations, early found its way to the peoples of western 
Europe. Not, however, in the examples we have hitherto 
chronicled — exception being made for Apollonius of Tyre — 
but in plots of novels unknown to us in the original, 
and in episodes of others, which cannot be traced to any 
definite ancestry. To their transmission and diffusion not 
only the learned, in their eagerness for novelty, contributed 
with copies of manuscripts still extant, but also the oral 
interchanges of traders, pilgrims, and crusaders were 
even of greater assistance. Of undoubted Greek origin is 
the subject of Eracle, versified in French, about 1169, by 
Gautier of Arras, whose hero rises at last to the dignity of 
Emperor. The source of Flore and Blanchefleur, so pop- 
ular in all mediaeval literatures, must have been some novel 
of erotic adventure. But more important than either of 
these, Florimont (dated 1188), by Aimon of Varennes, will 
doubtless prove, since its theme, the career of Philip of 
Macedonia, was found by the author in Greek territory, and 
may have been the echo of some lost romance of chivalry } 
similar in many particulars to the unique story of Nimrod. 
Italy gathered up gladly the wreckage of the Greco- 
Roman fiction, loaning it afterward to her northern neigh, 
bors or keeping it for herself. These borrowings may be 
easily recognized in some of Boccaccio's tales, where the 
heroes are persecuted, undergo perils by land and sea, are 
cast away, or captured by pirates. The first story of the 
fifth day of the Decameron tells how Cimon, denied the 
hand of his mistress Iphigenia, carries her off, is himself 
overcome and thrown into prison, but escapes and regains 
his bride. The action is placed among the islands of the 
eastern Mediterranean, and Boccaccio himself cites the 
annals of Cyprus for his authority. The seventh story of 
the second day, where the power of fate, the familiar Tyche, 
is extolled, may be regarded as a caricature of such con- 



_MI 



GREEK NOVEL. AUTHORS AND WORKS. 81 

stancy as Anthia showed in the Babylonica. Crete and 
Rhodes are the scene of the events related, and the stand- 
ard attraction of murders is not at all despised. A Greek 
novel may have also been the ultimate source of the third 
story of the fourth day of the Decameron. 

Mediaeval Europe, then, knew the novel of the East in its 
mutilations and abridgments, and welcomed it with the 
same hospitality with which it greeted the literary frag- 
ments of all times and all peoples. But it was not until the 
revival of learning, beginning in Italy with Petrarch and 
Boccaccio, had nearly run its course, that the greater writers 
of Alexandrian fiction, who had for centuries lain neglected 
in their manuscripts, were revealed to the modern world. 
The works of Photius first called attention to them ; next 
the humanists rendered them from Greek into Latin, and 
from Latin they were translated finally into the modern ver- 
naculars. But the most literary form which they received 
at the Renaissance was the French version of Bishop 
Amyot, made directly from the original. Not all, however, 
were thus favored with the notice of the sixteenth century, 
for the stories of Xenophon and Chariton did not come to 
light until the eighteenth was well under way. So that 
the influence which the novels, as a whole, exerted on 
modern fiction is to be limited to the specimens in the 
hands of the humanists. Though the most important part 
of their contributions to the fiction of Spain and France 
consisted in their more striking incidents, yet the indirect 
force of their plan and composition was not without bene- 
ficial results to modern novelists, as witness the influence 
of Theagenes and Chariclea on Cervantes' Persiles y Sigis- 
munda. And through the popularity which their episodes 
and style had gained, the makers of the heroic-gallant 
novel of the seventeenth century were led to imitate from 
them some of the leading features of their plots and to 
repeat to some extent the excellences of their methods. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

The mediaeval romance of chivalry resembles more 
closely the historical novel of Walter Scott than any other 
style of fiction with which we are now acquainted. This 
resemblance is not, indeed, in the material or plan. For 
the romance of chivalry deals wholly with fanciful per- 
sonages and realms, and has no more plan than The Three 
Musketeers. But the sentiment and the ideals of the two 
kinds of narrative are practically the same. They both 
eulogize a social condition which is ceasing to be, or per- 
haps has been, and they have to do with the exploits and 
affections of nobles or princes alone, while the common 
herd neither toils nor suffers in the background, but rejoices 
in its ability to add to the glory and power of the master. 
And the master always prospers in his affairs, with these 
ancestors of Scott, for the romance of chivalry is persist- 
ently optimistic. 

We claim nowadays that we are the inheritors of the 
ages, an assertion which is no doubt true, and if we should 
specify " Middle Ages " the claim might meet with even less 
contradiction. For in that era of the world our family tree 
first appeared above the ground, and its trunk has since been 
fed from the roots twining among the ruins of ancient civili- 
zation. And so the soil made of the dust of its own monu- 
ments has nurtured the grafts of antiquity set so repeatedly 
on our parent stock. Socially and politically we are con- 
fessedly mediaeval in origin, but not so evidently mediaeval 
in our literature. Poetry, the drama especially, essay- 



— __ 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 83 

writing, history, philosophy, have each and all experienced 
at many points in their evolution the power of Greek and 
Roman thought, and felt the influence of classical taste and 
forms. Fiction alone has been comparatively unhindered 
in its development during these centuries of continuous 
change, so that if we except the pastoral novels, and allow 
a strain of Greek blood in the heroic-gallant novel of the 
seventeenth century, we may quite safely assume that the 
romances of our ancestors have descended to us unmixed in 
lineage. To be sure they profited by their relations with the 
East, whose stories, legends, or superstitions, brought over- 
land through Persia and Constantinople, or taking ship 
from Arabia to Italy or Granada, had entered into the 
material available for modern fiction, even before the forma- 
tion of the modern tongues. 

But the novel by itself has not shared so largely in this 
gift of Eastern lore and fancy as the other classes of fiction. 
Its substance is more indigenous, and its growth has been 
more independent of external and foreign influences. The 
explanation of this fact is readily seen, when we stop to con- 
sider that the longer narratives of imaginative happenings, 
which form the main body of our novels, are connected 
with the legendary past of the nation's history. They thus 
are interwoven with its national life, they are cherished the 
more fondly in the popular heart, are kept more rigidly in 
their primitive shape, and are defended more jealously 
against the invasion of events and incidents which the 
people instinctively recognize to be alien to their ancestral 
heritage. And to this wide-reaching national antipathy to 
all innovation from sources foreign to the national spirit, we 
must add the disdain which the educated classes, down to 
comparatively recent times, felt for that branch of writing 
which was intended for popular amusement. In the Middle 
Ages and during the early Renaissance particularly, they 
avoided even the higher grades of vernacular literature. 



84 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

How much more, then, the recitals composed for the pleas- 
ure of the rude nobles or the delectation of the unpolished 
burghers ! Dante is the only author who seems certain of 
the immortality of his compositions In the popular tongue. 
Petrarch, on the contrary, reveals the true conception of the 
scholars of his time, when he considers his lyrics the amuse- 
ment of his leisure hours, and bases his reputation with 
posterity on his epic poem in Latin, the forgotten Africa. 
Taking these attitudes and feelings into consideration, 
there should be no surprise at the purely national and 
modern character of the early novel. 

Between the Greek novel of antiquity and the modern 
romance of chivalry are many points of correspondence. 
Their essential resemblance is nowhere shown more 
strongly than in their actual make-up. Both arose from the 
fusion of a love story with a narrative of exciting adven- 
tures. The spirit of both was undoubtedly the same at the 
start, aristocratic in tone. The purpose of each was the 
same, to amuse the nobles and the people. And when 
the tales of court life had run their course, both were 
succeeded by plebeian stories of a more or less realistic cast. 
The material, out of which the Greek novel of the aristo- 
cratic school and the romance of chivalry were fashioned, 
is also the same, relatively speaking, and the time of the ap- 
pearance of each in their respective literatures corresponds 
also in a striking manner. We had only theory and the 
one example of the Nimrod fragment to support this view 
of the formation of the Greek novel ; but for the develop- 
ment of the Spanish, abundant evidence is at hand. It was 
born when the flowering period of mediaeval literature had 
passed, when the heroic songs of the paladins and the lyric 
strains of the Trouveres had been stifled under the weight 
of a garrulous prose and the burden of linguistic resonance. 
The mediaeval drama had reached its height in the 
mysteries of the Nativity and Passion, the Miracles of the 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 85 

Virgin, and the plays of Corpus Christi day. Then, like his 
colleague of ancient Greece, the ambitious author of the 
later fifteenth century abandoned the repetition of themes 
long worn out, and exercised his talents in giving shape to 
a new aspirant to literary distinction, by adapting to the 
taste of the cultivated classes the favorite legends of the 
common people. 

Unfortunately for the excellence of this new branch of 
composition, its literary sponsor was himself of no great 
mental force, and had not the backing of a school of rheto- 
ricians or of a group of humanists. For one of the greatest 
drawbacks to the whole vernacular literature of western 
Europe previous to the Renaissance lies in this, that very 
few authors, whether poets, dramatists, or novelists, had 
the gift of self-correction or the notion of literary style. 
After the originality of their first inspiration had departed 
they wrote hopelessly on and on, turning over and over 
and diluting the same matter, varied only by the most 
elementary methods of artistic composition. The conse- 
quence was that there is hardly a piece of work produced 
in the whole mediaeval workshop — if we leave aside the 
university-educated Italians — which in its plan or form 
appeals to the literary public of to-day, or indeed of any 
generation subsequent to the contemporaries of its first 
fashioner. We may not then expect to find pre-Renaissance 
literature of absorbing interest, either in thought or style. 
In thought it repeats with a few variations the ideas of the 
Middle Ages. In style it does not at all foreshadow the 
classical criticism of the Renaissance. The fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries employed their slight literary activity in 
the modern vernaculars with summing up the results of 
the previous three centuries, and in placing them within 
the reach of all classes of society. It was the period of 
preparation, which was to make the modern nations ready 
for the reception of ancient art and learning. So the 



86 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVAIRY. 

romance of chivalry, the only literary creation of that 
period, reflects most faithfully its traits and characteristics. 
And in all the 150 years of its favor, from the invention of 
printing to the publication of Don Quixote, it never 
was able to attain, in spite of the most labored inven- 
tions, the force and directness of its first production. 
Rather it went farther and farther astray from nature, until 
it finally disappeared in the region of the unreal and 
fantastic. 

As would probably be the case with the Greek novel, did 
we possess that part of it which must have had its origin in 
the prose form of the national epic, the romance of chiv- 
alry may be regarded as the epitome of the Middle Ages. 
If we look at its substance alone we see in it a mixture of 
the Breton epic, in large proportion, of the national epic, 
in small proportion, and of the roman d'aventure, the 
recipient flask — to carry out our simile to the bitter end. 

The romcifi d'aventure gave the rambling epic narrative a 
plot, which, however, is of no more importance here than it 
was in the novel of the Greco-Romans. To be sure, the 
incentive to adventure arises from the relation of the hero to 
the heroine, instead of from some offended deity, although in 
the Nimrod fragment the absence of Nimrod from his lady- 
love seems to be occasioned by almost the same cause as 
brought about the separation of Amadis and Oriana, in 
Amadis of Gaul. But from whatever reason the adventures 
are entered upon, it is they, and not the mutual affection of 
the leading characters, which are the main subject of the 
narrative. The reader is carried on from one peril and 
combat of the hero to another, and can scarcely hear, amid 
the breaking of lances and the clashing of swords, the 
plaintive murmur of the solitary maiden pining within the 
castle walls. She is brought again to our attention only 
when it is necessary to give an excuse for a new series 
of wanderings. In this predominance of adventure the 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 87 

romancer showed beyond mistaking his rude conception 
of his art. By catering to the desire for the marvelous and 
the appetite for excitement, which are liable to fluctuations 
from age to age, he left to one side those traits of human 
life and action that are ever true, and that extend the 
fame of their faithful delineators throughout all time. It 
is apparent, therefore, why the poetical roman d'aventure 
has enjoyed a longer term of popularity, in its brevity and 
simplicity, than all the long-winded prose narratives with 
which the fifteenth century endeavored to supplant them. 

But the roman d'aventure is itself an evolution from some- 
thing more simple and shorter, and, consequently (owing 
to the lack of taste among the mediaeval poets), from some- 
thing more perfect and pleasing in form and style. This 
forerunner is the romance or chanson d'histoire, a lyric-epic 
poem of but few strophes, which presents to us an adven- 
ture, or an episode of love, pure and simple. More often 
love and adventure are combined in these charming min- 
iatures in verse. When they first appeared in French 
literature — for the romances are peculiar to northern France 
— the feudal system was already solidly established. Their 
province was to depict the courtly side of that system. 
Their tone is thoroughly aristocratic, and their surroundings 
are clearly the same as those of the heroic epic. 

How great the popularity of these gems of early poetry 
may have been we can only conjecture from their theme, 
and from the name sometimes given them of chansons de 
toile, because they were sung by the noble ladies while sit- 
ting at their embroidery. Their numbers are now few, and 
those preserved may not be the most interesting of their 
kind. A good example of what have come down to us is 
afforded by the poem called Rainaud, after its hero. It 
tells us how that knight, returning from the court, passes 
before the castle of his sweetheart Arembour, who is em- 
broidering at the window, but from unfounded jealousy 



S8 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

does not look up at her. She laments to him the former 
times, when he had hung on her words and been grieved at 
the idea of her indifference. In answer he replies that she 
had been false to him ; but when she offers to swear to the 
contrary he believes her and they are reconciled. All this 
scene of love and repentance, its setting and its dialogue, 
is expressed in thirty lines of ten syllables each. It is true 
miniature painting of the great world of life and action. 

Another of these poems, Orior, is not so long even as 
Rainaud. Two sisters are seen bathing in a fountain which 
gleams white in the valley among the trees, where " the winds 
blow and the branches crackle." Back from a jousting comes 
Gerard. He spies out the sisters, makes love to Gay and 
carries her away with him, while Orior, abandoned by her 
playmate, sadly returns to her lonely home. 

The pastoral scenery of Orior and the melancholy tinge 
to the tale become urban and tragic in another romance of 
Belle Doette, which is later in date and longer, but still 
simple and straightforward. Doette sits at her window 
with a scroll in her hand, but she sees not the words before 
her and is thinking of Doon, her lover, who has gone to 
win fame at a tournament. Suddenly a messenger arrives 
without. Doette hastens down the steps to meet him. 
Tears are the only answer to her first question. She trem- 
bles, sinks, swoons, yet revives with great effort and asks 
again. It is too true. Doon has fallen dead in the lists. 
Her 'self-command returns. Calm and resigned to the 
decree of Heaven she makes ready her robe of mourn- 
ing and renounces the world, while she desires that her 
dower may go to build an abbey into which no faithless 
lover may enter. 

There is a charm about these poems of princely love in 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which might well delay 
us on our barren way from fact to fact. In their few lines 
they give all the essentials of their surroundings and 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALR Y. 89 

plot, with words direct and full of meaning, and phrases 
luminous in the dawn of poetry's morning. The spirit of 
the three we have cited warrants us in going still further 
than their actual contents allow, and finding in them the 
germ of longer, but not less delicate, tales of love. Rai- 
naud is heroic in its tone. Pride and jealousy animate it. 
Orior is full of the joys of nature, which are at last dimin- 
ished by the desires of the human heart. Belle Doette is a 
complete picture of longing, disappointment, and resigna- 
tion, and is like the erotic poems of Greece in these first 
two attributes. But where, in the solution of the stories of 
the heathen world, the loss of the lover is generally followed 
by the suicide of the one who is left behind, in the drama 
of mediaeval sorrow a new element has entered, which is to 
change the whole spirit of modern literature. The Christian 
maiden of France does not attempt her own life in blind 
despair of happiness and hope, but has learned to find in 
religion and its promise of immortality a solace for the 
present and a comfort for the future. Trusting in Provi- 
dence she submits to its mysterious ways. 

The French romance presented to its listeners — for these 
poems were intended to be sung — details of actual exist- 
ence, not at all fanciful, but real, and for this reason it may 
be well compared to the Greek love story. But there is 
another kind of French erotic poetry of the Middle Ages, 
which approaches much nearer to the elegies of antiquity, 
not only in its melancholy strain and tragic ending, but 
also in the partially mythological nature of its plot. This 
is the narrative lai y the original of which is the musical lai 
of the Celtic bards. Wandering minstrels had brought 
the traditions and legends of the vanquished British tribes 
into French and Norman territory, where the popular 
curiosity they excited soon demanded local renderings. 
These versions were made either directly from the Celtic, 
or indirectly from an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Celtic. 



90 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

They relate events out of which grew the stories of King 
Arthur and his knights. They tell of heroes beloved by 
fairies, of magic castles containing enchanted maidens, of 
combats with monsters, and of victories crowned by love. 
Many of them are more particularly devoted to the passion 
of Tristan and Iseult and the vengeance of Mark, the king. 
Later, in the course of their increasing popularity, these 
lots of Celtic origin attracted to themselves stories of 
strange adventures from other sources, especially from 
tales of the East. 

The best known writer of the narrative lai is Marie, 
" de France " — as she always' signs herself — who lived at 
the English court, probably under Henry II., and who pre- 
ferred to translate into French, Anglo-Saxon versions of the 
Celtic legends. A good specimen of the kind of poem she 
thus worked over is the lai called by her Guigemar. The 
hero of that name, while hunting in the forest, shoots at a 
white hind, but the arrow rebounds and wounds the knight 
himself. Now the hind speaks and tells him that to be 
healed of the wound he must find a woman who has suffered 
more than any other woman has ever suffered, and for 
whose sake he shall have done deeds at which all lovers 
shall marvel. Unable to think how all this may be accom- 
plished, Guigemar wanders off in deep despair, until he 
reaches a bay of the sea, where he finds a boat moored. 
He enters the boat and is astonished at the richness and 
luxury of its appointments. While he thus lingers in mute 
admiration invisible hands are pushing the boat from the 
shore, and Guigemar looks up at last only to find himself 
on the open sea. Soon sleep overcomes and binds fast his 
senses. Toward evening he arrives in the harbor of an 
ancient city. There, in a castle facing on the deep, a 
young wife, attended by her niece and an aged priest, is 
strictly guarded by her jealous husband. To the castle 
landing comes the boat. The inmates of the tower go to 



wm 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 91 

meet it, find the knight, bring him within the walls, and the 
pitying lady dresses his wounds. His gratitude for her 
tender care awakens her affection, and he tarries until the 
coming of her lord counsels flight. Then the boat returns 
for him and bears him back over the waves to Brittany, 
where by many deeds of valor he wins great renown. The 
lady thus deserted, after many weary months of waiting for 
tidings from her absent lover, resolves to end her burden- 
some existence. She goes to the sea-wall to throw herself 
from it, but the boat comes before her, receives her on 
board, and carries her safely to Brittany, where after many 
perils and disappointments she is finally united in marriage 
to her knight. 

Guigemar is a good example of the lai, and does not 
present any more incidents than many others of its class, 
which in common with it contain certain episodes that are 
to be found in the later romances of chivalry. Among 
these are the boat moved by unseen forces, which trans- 
ports the hero to strange lands, the magic of the wound 
and its healing, the tower of the stronghold unbarred to 
the coming knight alone, and the necessity of undergoing 
adventures in which the fidelity of the lovers is tested by 
many suitors of the opposite sex before their happiness can 
be complete. This last mentioned device was a favorite 
incident in the Greek novels. All these traits of the lais 
appear again in every romance of chivalry. 

At this point in the evolution of the modern novel, on the 
boundary between the romatice and lai on the one hand, 
and the roman d'aventure on the other, there arises a 
problem of literary history, interesting to contemplate, but 
most difficult to solve. The romance of chivalry, like the 
Greek novel, is made up of adventures combined with a love 
story, and the former very much exceeds the latter in impor- 
tance as well as in extent. The question, therefore, natu- 
rally presents itself, as to whether this proportion was always 



92 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

observed, and whether the relative position of the two 
elements was established at the very origin of the novels. 
To pretend to give an answer to this question, based on 
the study of the ancient novel alone, is not possible, inas- 
much as we do not possess any other than its completed 
form. But the case is different with the romance of 
chivalry. 

For the first of the kind, Amadis of Gaul, is already an 
expansion of a much shorter narrative, as can be seen on 
its surface. This expansion was brought about by the 
insertion of episodes of dangers and wanderings, and not 
in the multiplication of love scenes between the leading 
characters. The proof of this statement is in the reading 
of the book. Now Amadis of Gaul received its final ex- 
panding in the last third of the fifteenth century. But 
many of its essential features may be found in stories of 
love and adventure before the end of the twelfth. Conse- 
quently it is probable that the development of our romance 
occupied all this interval, or at the very least two centuries 
of it, and judging from what we know of its definite form, 
we may assume that the tendency of its evolution was 
always along the line of the addition of new adventures. 

Now the earliest type of French erotic poetry known to 
us, the romance, is a union of love and adventure. But its 
interest lies wholly in the sketch of the passion and in the 
meeting of the lovers, while the element of adventure 
furnishes merely the environment, the frame. The jealousy 
and repentance of Rainaud is what fixes the poet's atten- 
tion, and it is only to give his scornful passing-by a suitable 
pretext that the knight's connection with the royal court is 
mentioned. So in Belle Doette no importance is attached 
to the fact that Doon was killed in a tournament. It is the 
domestic, intimate side of the hero's life which is the object 
of the artist's portrayal. 

But in the next step in the evolution of mediaeval erotic 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALR Y. 93 

poetry, the /at, we see the beginning of the desire to gain 
the reader's attention by laying stress on the events them- 
selves, rather than on their influence over the people who 
participate in them. Hunting scenes are introduced, magic 
spells are cited, superstitions are evoked, and combats with 
hostile warriors are described. All of which is so much 
extraneous material, and has only an arbitrary connection 
with the actual plot of the story. Yet the main theme of 
the lai is still the love of the hero and the heroine, and to 
this theme the adventures, though numerous, are still sub- 
ordinate. When, however, we descend a little farther in 
the order of time and take up the successor of the romance 
and the fat, the roman d'aventure, we find that the balance 
inclines away from the side of the love story. 

There is another argument available for the point at 
issue, an argument derived from analogy. The first evolu- 
tion of which we have any knowledge in French mediaeval 
literature is in the field of heroic poetry, the national epic. 
It has been proven beyond any doubt, from references in 
contemporaneous authorities and from the actual testimony 
of successive manuscripts of the same poem, that the long 
recitals existing in the twelfth century of the fabulous and 
historical deeds of the peers of Charlemagne began, as far 
back as the eighth, with short songs celebrating the prowess 
of some favorite leader, or the popular emotion caused by 
some unusual occurrence. These songs were at first almost 
wholly lyric, being composed by the retainers of the hero 
for the edification of his countrymen. They were also 
historical and abode by facts, even while magnifying them. 
But as time wore on, and the generation which had seen 

I the exploits thus proclaimed gave way to one which knew 
of them only by hearsay, the minstrel, who had received 
these songs as his poetical inheritance, found it necessary 
to give them an introduction and a running commentary. 
In other words, as the event and the hero receded in time, 



94 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

more and more explanation was required in the poems of 
which they were the theme. So that the song from a 
purely lyric composition became more and more narrative, 
until finally, all historical connection being forgotten, it 
incorporated, without protest, the inventions with which 
ambitious bards sought to adorn it, and suffered the annex- 
ation of poetical recitals based on incidents which had 
happened in other times and in distant places. In such a 
way was the first manuscript of the Chanson de Roland 
made up, and it was afterward lengthened by the same 
methods. Thus from a simple eulogy of some one exploit 
in the great hero's career the song developed, under the 
successive revisions of five centuries, into a complete 
biography not only of Roland, but of his friends and his 
enemies as well, and finally ended in a regular chronicle of 
all the real and imaginary events which took place in the 
lifetime of the great emperor. Other epic poems of France 
have the same history. Their original statements of fact 
and praise have been expanded and increased, until the 
interest in the subject, which they were written to commem- 
orate, has been completely engulfed in the multiplicity of 
details which preceded and followed it. 

The romans d'aventure, which are the next step in the 
assumed development of the romance of chivalry, appear 
to have been the chosen literature of the nobility of 
France. Their vogue lasted from the middle of the twelfth 
century to the last quarter of the thirteenth. Some sixty 
of them have been preserved in manuscript, and these vary 
from a few hundred to several thousand lines in length. At 
their beginning they seem to have been expanded romances 
or lots. But later they drew upon a great variety of sources, 
both native and foreign, and adopted any subject, historical 
or legendary, which they could turn to good account. The 
earliest roman d'aventure known to modern scholars is 
Ilk et Galeron (about 1168), written for Beatrice, wife of 



■■in imn inr III — H i^— MMM B— 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 95 

Frederick Barbarossa, by the same Gautier of Arras who 
versified Eracle. A Breton lai, the story of JSludic, sup- 
plied Gautier with a part of his material. He tells how a 
knight of Brittany, Ille by name, an orphan and abused by 
his relatives, regained his estate at last with the aid of the 
king of France, and married Galeron, the daughter of his 
feudal suzerain. Afterward, while jousting, he loses the 
sight of one eye. In despair he forsakes his wife, and 
makes the pilgrimage to Rome. There he finally becomes 
the emperor's seneschal, and the imperial princess falls in 
love with him. But like his prototypes of the Alexandrian 
period he remains constant to his bride. She in her turn 
reaches Rome, finds her husband, but does not acquaint 
him with her presence, and for some time she supports her- 
self with the work of her own hands. But at last she 
reveals herself to Ille and returns with him to Brittany, 
where they live happily for many years, until Galeron 
retires to a convent, and Ille is at liberty to wed the love- 
lorn princess. Thus after all virtue is rewarded, even in 
the twelfth century. 

Something like this reward is the recompense of another 
hero, whose life is the subject of the French Guillawne de 
Palerme, better known to us by its English version. The 
action begins in Sicily, where a Spanish prince, changed 
into a wolf by the arts of his step-mother, rescues young 
William from an uncle's cruelty and carries him away to the 
vicinity of Rome. The emperor soon finds him and 
makes him page to his daughter, Melior. Mutual love in 
due time kindles both mistress and attendant. They 
escape together from court, disguised in bearskins, and 
after enduring perils and adventures of every kind, finally 
reach Palermo, where all comes to a happy end, including 
the disenchanting of the good were-wolf, who has stood 
by the lovers nobly and rescued them often from the great- 
est dangers. 



96 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

Elements of plot and episodes for the future novel are 
here in abundance. Like William, Amadis, too, was a casta- 
way. He met Oriana in the same way as the Sicilian hero 
met Melior. A fairy also protected them both in their 
trials and smoothed the way to their future happiness. 
Many other romans d'aventure might be cited which would 
offer numerous resemblances to the details of the romances 
of chivalry, some of which even are true to real life. Guil- 
laume de Dole, for instance, which was written in the first 
quarter of the thirteenth century for a male patron, is a 
genuine historical novel in verse. The action takes place 
mainly at the court of Conrad, Emperor of Germany, located 
by the poem at Mayence, and in the various cities and cas- 
tles of the Rhineland. The subject is based on the friendly 
intercourse of French and German knights, their banquets 
and tournaments. The story is the love of Conrad for 
Lienor, William's sister, the unjust accusation brought 
against her by an envious seneschal, her own defense at the 
imperial court, and her marriage with the emperor. Descrip- 
tions of court and baronial life are many and varied, the 
reality of the events is accentuated by the detail of man- 
ners and fashions, even to the introduction of many well- 
known songs into the narrative, and the whole design and 
carrying-out of the plan reveal a talent which in its veracity 
and force is curiously like the manner of the great his- 
torical novelist of the nineteenth century. 

Even the modern realistic novel has a predecessor among 
these charming poems. La Chatelaine de Vergi, written in 
the last quarter of the thirteenth century, contains the ever 
recurring tale of love, jealousy, and death. The Lady of 
Vergi loves a Burgundian knight and admits him to her 
chamber by night, on a certain signal given to identify 
him. But the knight is summoned later to the ducal court, 
where the duchess falls violently in love with him, is 
rebuffed, and, in revenge, accuses him to her husband of 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 97 

attempted injury to her honor. The duke, who admires his 
courtier, is about to punish him with banishment only, when 
the latter, unwilling to leave his mistress, reveals his secret 
love to his lord. The duchess, seeing that her husband 
has become, after all, rather the firmer friend of the knight 
than his enemy, questions him about the case, and by 
repeated assaults finally worries the whole affair out of him. 
Pentecost comes, and with it all the vassals, including the 
Lady of Vergi, arrive at court. A great banquet is held, 
and when the ladies have withdrawn from the table, and are 
presumably gossiping among themselves, the duchess twits 
her attendant about her lover's signal. The Lady feels 
that her knight is false and has betrayed her honor. When 
the others go to the court ball she retires alone to a dark- 
ened chamber, and there, in the hearing of a maid whom 
she does not see, breaks out into sad bewailings over her 
desolate lot. Her pathetic expressions of grief are sud- 
denly checked by death, the result of excessive emotion. 

Now the knight, missing his beloved from the dance, 
comes in search of her. He finds the chamber, enters it, 
and the lifeless body meets his gaze. From the maid he 
learns what has passed. Full of reproaches for his own 
weakness in surrendering her secret, he seizes a sword 
which hangs near-by on the wall, and buries it in his own 
breast. The duke then appears, finds the lover lying near 
his mistress, hears the sad story, takes the dripping sword 
and bears it to the ballroom. The trail of blood and the 
countenance of the duke stop short the affrighted guests 
in the midst of their merriment. He slowly tells them of 
the fidelity of the lovers and the perfidy of the duchess, 
and their tears mingle with his, while the duchess droops 
and dies before the light of morning. The next day the 
duke oversees the interment of all three. Joy has now 
fled from his life, he crosses himself, and dies fighting for 
the faith in Palestine. 



98 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

But our partiality for the roman d'aventure, certainly the 
most attractive, lifelike, and interesting production of 
mediaeval literature, is leading us somewhat astray from the 
point at issue, with which La Chatelaine de Vergi has really 
nothing to do, since it exercised no influence on the ro- 
mances of chivalry nor on any other kind of mediaeval fiction. 
For its keen observation of human sentiment and the dra- 
matic exposition of its narrative either passed unnoticed by 
its contemporaries, or were repugnant to their longing for 
the marvelous. Four centuries passed away before the 
psychological novel repeated in France this brilliant begin- 
ning, and Mme. de La Fayette published La Princesse de 
Cleves. We must also confess that the historical novel, 
whose prototype might have been Guillaume de Dole, did 
not fare much better. A few short stories in prose of the 
fifteenth century, like Pierre de Provence, or the more allur- 
ing Jean de Paris, may be taken for weak followers of 
such a vigorous predecessor. But its action on the ro- 
mances of chivalry is vague at the best, if indeed the pic- 
tures of court life and notions of geography found in the 
latter are not drawn from a more epic source than springs 
from Gidllaume de Dole and its kind. And in only one 
feature of their construction are the later prose romances 
like the romans d'aventure. This is in the diminishing pro- 
portion of love relative to the share of adventure. 

It is quite certain that the romances of chivalry take 
their subject from a romance or a roman d'aventure as well 
as the general features of their plot. But their substance 
they obtained from the prose versions of another style of 
mediaeval poetry, akin in form and length to the romans 
d'aventare, contemporaneous in date and partly similar in 
origin. This kind is seen in the poems which celebrated 
the deeds of Arthur and the Round Table, the love of Tris- 
tan, and the mystery of the Holy Grail. The forerunners 
of these stories in their turn — excepting those relating to 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 99 

the religious part of the Grail legend — were Celtic lais, 
which toward the middle of the twelfth century had been 
joined together more or less artistically, and thus formed a 
connected poetical narrative. This welding took place in 
England at first, at the Anglo-Norman court, and the stories 
thus formed were soon exported to France, either orally or 
in writing. Fashionable poets received them there and tried 
to put together more perfectly their incongruous parts, en- 
larged this episode, rejected that, interpreted at haphazard 
legend and symbol, and strove to substitute reason for 
mysticism. They modified the primitive savagery and 
strange manners of the Celtic traditions, refined their senti- 
ment, polished their verse, and in due time presented them 
to their royal patrons as models of chivalry and honor. 
No point in literary history is more obscure than the record 
of the passage of the wild, rough, and undisciplined Celtic 
lai into the courtly French poem which has come down to 
us. But it now seems probable that the trimming and re- 
fining process began under the Henrys of England, and 
was continued and completed in the literary circles of the 
Continent. 

The great center of the final revision of the Arthurian 
cycle of poems was the court of the province of Cham- 
pagne. The Countess Mary, the daughter of Louis VII. 
of France and the celebrated Eleanor of Poitou — who car- 
ried the spirit of Provencal poetry and the freedom of 
Provencal manners, first to the knights of France and after- 
wards to the nobility of England — held sway there from 
1 164 to 1 198, and her vassals, both high-born and plebeian, 
brought the art of French lyric verse to its full development. 
The favorite author of Mary's reign was Chretien, from the 
town of Troyes, an admirer and translator of Ovid, an imi- 
tator of the Provencal forms of lyric poetry, and the most 
unwearying revisor of the Breton legends that ever lived. 
In fact, through him we derive a large share of our knowl- 



IOO ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

edge of those legends. They came to him from across the 
water in prose or rhyme, by word of mouth or in manuscript, 
and at the command of his countess Chretien adapted them 
to the fashion of his age. Yet notwithstanding their in- 
debtedness to him it is a great misfortune for the Celtic 
traditions that Chretien very rarely understood what he re- 
ceived, and did not bother to cast about for an explanation. 
He distorted their sense and twisted their application to the 
profit of the idea of gallantry which the Troubadours of the 
South had conveyed to him. So that, between the veritable 
chasms he would leave in his narratives and the delight he 
took in postponing the solution of what he did comprehend, 
modern scholars have almost renounced further efforts to 
arrive at the unraveling of this most enticing literary 
snarl. 

The poems of Chretien comprise the stories of the Round 
Table, properly speaking, and the search for the Holy 
Grail. His revision of Tristan's career is lost in the orig- 
inal form but is preserved in a later prose version. Nearly 
all of these poems are of a biographical nature. They are 
made up of adventures which are undergone by some lead- 
ing character, but which are not sufficiently connected by 
cause and effect to be called a plot. The element of love 
in them is very slight, since their whole purpose is to pre- 
sent a model of gallantry. Therefore we can hardly call 
them novels in verse, and cannot look to them, as we did 
to the romans cTaventure, for any ideas of construction. 
But the material out of which they are made, and which 
they transmitted to their prose successors, is plainly the 
substance of the romances of chivalry, and was openly 
borrowed by the authors of these romances to fill out the 
skeleton of their plot — to give it shape and attractiveness. 
An excellent illustration of the likeness of matter between 
the romances of chivalry and the poems of the Breton 
cycle is afforded by one of the most famous of Chretien's 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 101 

works, Twain, better known to scholars as Le Chevalier au 
lion. 

The poet tells how one day, at Arthur's court, the knight 
Calogrenanz was relating his experience in the forest near 
an enchanted fountain, and bewailing his overthrow by a 
giant of most hideous aspect, armed with a mace. Among 
the listeners was Iwain. Stirred up by his friend's recital 
he resolves to avenge him, leaves the court, journeys 
though the forest and comes at length to the fountain, 
gleaming white beneath a majestic pine. Around the 
fountain is a beautiful marble balustrade, and near by 
stands a chapel. On the pine a golden basin is hanging. 
This basin Iwain takes and with it he dips water from 
the fountain, and pours it out on the balustrade. Suddenly 
from all corners of the heavens rush mighty thunderbolts, 
and from the sky the clouds fall in rain, snow, and hail. 
But the sudden storm is followed by as sudden a calm. 
Birds gather and settle on the tree in such vast numbers as 
to hide its branches, while they sing most sweetly, but each 
a different song. In the distance next appears a hardy 
knight who, on his approach, assails Iwain with abusive 
words and rebukes him for having desolated his country by 
the storm. But our hero, nothing daunted, rides stoutly at 
him, puts him to flight, and pursues him hotly to his castle. 
On reaching it the fugitive disappears and Iwain, pushing 
on his horse into an open room of the stronghold, feels a 
raised door suddenly falling behind him, which cuts off the 
horse's hind-quarters and blocks all egress from the place. 

Iwain is now a prisoner. But a maiden comes who gives 
him a ring which shall render him invisible. Armed with 
this talisman he remains in the room and escapes detection, 
even though the body of the knight, who has been done to 
death by Iwain, bleeds from its wounds when it is borne 
through the chamber. Then when the danger has passed 
he reveals himself to the weeping widow, becomes enam- 



102 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

ored of her and she, mindful of his prowess, with true 
worldly wisdom, elects him to be her lord. Now Iwain is 
in duty bound to defend the magic of the fountain. This 
he does valiantly even against Arthur's knights, to whom, 
when he has unhorsed the braggart Kay, he makes himself 
known, invites them to his castle and entertains them most 
royally. 

But a change comes over the spirit of Iwain. The sight 
of his old companions awakens in him his slumbering love 
for adventures. He asks his lady for a year's leave of 
absence, obtains it, and, along with her permission, a ring 
which is to keep him mindful of her love. Now, with 
Gawayne, his dearest friend, he roams the world as a knight- 
errant. So absorbing are the perils and combats they 
undergo that the twelve months pass as one day, the fur- 
lough is unwittingly exceeded, and the lady in anger sends 
to Iwain, demanding her ring. By the same messenger 
she forbids him to appear in her presence again. Sorrow, 
and shame, and unavailing repentance torment forthwith 
our hero's heart. His grief robs him of his senses. Aban- 
doned and frenzied he wanders in the forest until he meets 
with a pious hermit. By him Iwain is befriended until a 
balm can be brought to him from the fairy Morgan and he 
is cured of his malady. Though his mind is healed, the 
anger of his lady is unappeased. So he seeks oblivion in 
fresh adventures. He defends innocence, punishes guilt, 
and protects the unfortunate even among animals. In this 
way he frees a lion from a serpent's folds and wins the 
lasting affection of the beast. Attended by him, Iwain 
comes once more to the enchanted fountain, hears there a 
sound of lamentation in the chapel hard-by, and going into 
it finds the maiden who had given him the magic ring, now 
condemned to be burned at the stake. Iwain promises to 
be her champion and rescue her from her enemies. He 
then retires to a neighboring castle for the night. But 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 103 

there he learns that a giant, Harpyns of the Mountain, had 
demanded the daughter of the house in marriage, and was 
holding as pledges for her hand four of her brothers, hav- 
ing already killed two others. Early the next morning the 
giant comes in sight, attended by a dwarf and driving on 
before him his four prisoners. Iwain sallies forth from the 
castle, meets the giant, overcomes him, and sends him and 
his dwarf to Gawayne at Arthur's court, bidding them say 
that they were sent by the Knight of the Lion. But this 
incident has deferred too long the aid pledged to the 
imprisoned maiden, and Iwain hurries now from the grateful 
master of the castle to the fountain. There he finds the 
girl already bound to the stake. He loses no time in chal- 
lenging her three accusers, and with the help of his lion 
worsts them all. The fight takes place before his mistress' 
eyes, but, under his new title and in his new dress, she does 
not recognize him. Disheartened once more, Iwain with- 
draws to a castle to be healed of his wounds. 

Here a fresh adventure awaits him. The elder of two 
sisters is trying to disinherit the younger, and has secured 
Gawayne for her champion. The younger, who has gone 
to Arthur's court for a defender, hears there of the prowess 
of the Knight of the Lion, and sends for him to help her. 
Iwain sets out with her messenger to obey the summons, 
but on their way to court they meet with evil greeting from 
a castle's battlements, and Iwain resolves to avenge the 
insult then and there. He enters the walls of the fortress 
and comes into a courtyard, where are sitting many maid- 
ens, wan and wasted, who are busily working on cloths. 
Once within the gate the porter roughly refuses an exit to 
the strangers, and Iwain is forced to pass on through the 
inclosure, into a meadow. There some one answers his 
questions, and tells him that the girls he saw in the court 
had come from Maiden Island, the king of which, having 
been conquered by two sons of the Devil, is compelled to 



104 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

send thirty girls to the victors as an annual tribute. Their 
rescue had already been tried by many knights, all of whom 
had failed. That night Iwain is hospitably entertained by 
the owner of the castle. The next morning, however, his 
host tells him he must fight these two sons of the demon. 
Soon after this unwelcome announcement the two devils, in 
the shape of black and hideous giants, come in sight, at- 
tack Iwain and are beaten after a long and bloody fight. 
Though a victor, our hero modestly declines the hand of 
his host's daughter — the reward pledged to the successful 
champion — and contents himself with setting the captive 
maidens free, after which he hastens to the assistance of 
the younger sister. In defending her he necessarily is 
pitted against Gawayne, who champions the elder girl. But 
as neither of the knights knows who is to be his antago- 
nist, and as neither of them recognizes the other, they fight, 
when they meet, with no advantage until evening falls, when 
each names himself, the combat ends, and with true friend- 
ship they submit their quarrel to the decision of the blame- 
less king. This duty done Iwain is thrown back upon his 
own cares once more, and presents himself again at the 
fountain. But this time there appears no defender of its 
enchantments. For the lady is without a knight, and sor- 
row oppresses her because of her disgrace. Here is an 
opportunity for the maiden of the magic ring to reconcile 
the two lovers. First she persuades her mistress to ac- 
cept the Knight of the Lion as her champion. Next she 
brings Iwain before her, he makes himself known, and is 
pardoned at last. 

So long an analysis of this poem would demand, per- 
haps, an apology, if its own story, which in the Middle 
Ages was so popular with the nobility of Germany and 
England, as well as with the knights of France, did not 
possess sufficient interest to justify its repetition in these 
latter days. The account of the adventures of the Knight 



w*m**—^mm 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 105 

of the Lion ranks among Chretien's best works. But it is 
independent of the great subjects which perpetuated the 
fame of the Arthurian legends, and having no bearing on 
the love of Lancelot for the Queen on the one hand, or 
on the quest of the Holy Grail on the other, it was never 
incorporated into the long prose narratives of the cycle, 
and so has not come down to posterity with them. But 
though we know it only through the original poem, or by 
means of the translations of this original into foreign 
tongues, and though no prose form of it appears to have 
existed, which would be an intermediary between Chretien's 
verse and the romances of chivalry of the fifteenth century, 
yet there are so many points of resemblance between the 
two that the former may be well considered as one of the 
models for the latter. Or it might be better to say that 
Iwain would offer a type of the models of Amadis of Gaul. 
In giving credence to this statement we are obliged to 
face the objection that a dozen generations of writers 
separate the model from its copy. But invention in the 
Middle Ages, at least in the vernacular literature, was 
wofully poor. The poets of the people repeated blindly 
one after another the traditions and superstitions which 
were current before their day, and modified them only in 
the direction of the unnatural and incredible. They had 
no idea of a return to nature, to freshen literary ideals and 
correct poetical images. Thus taste degenerated rather 
than improved, and mediaeval literature, lacking truth in 
thought as well as comeliness in form, possessed no 
defenses which were able to resist the inroads of Renais- 
sance style and learning. Only in the present century, by 
the discovery of the old manuscripts, has the educated 
world become aware of the many excellences of imagin- 
ation and expression which, in the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, characterized the ambitious writers, whose works 
were so crudely parodied in the vulgar compilations of the 



106 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

fifteenth. And no kind of literature shows the marks of 
this decadence so strongly as those universally popular nar- 
ratives which were based on the stories of the Round Table. 
But generalities must be upheld by details, and we must 
point out the particular features of plot or description which 
justify this view of a connection, whether strong or weak, 
between Amadis and Iwain. First, in regard to the plot, we 
find in both stories the leave of absence granted by the mis- 
tress to allow the knight to win fame by exploits ; the ring 
which she gives him to keep him mindful of his allegiance 
to her ; her dismissal of him, through a messenger, for 
his apparent faithlessness ; his despair in consequence, and 
the reception he meets with from a benevolent hermit ; his 
reappearance in the world under a descriptive title, and in 
an armor which conceals his identity, both from his friends, 
who may fight with him and he with them, each in ignor- 
ance of his opponent until the end of the combat, and from 
his mistress before whom he does mighty deeds ; finally his 
pardon by her and their happy union. Also in the episodes 
which concern the minor characters, as well as the leading 
ones, there is some likeness. Such are the imprisonment 
of knights through force or magic and their release by 
enamored maidens, attendants of the mistress of the castle, 
or by the mistress herself ; the enmity which always exists 
between knights and giants ; the sending of prisoners to 
court with messages from their captor, and the release of 
girls and knights by the prowess of the hero, who overthrows 
their jailer and breaks down the enchantments which bind 
them. Descriptions in Iwain, which are repeated in 
Amadis, include the location of fountains under pines ; the 
appearance and arms of the giants ; the deadly combats, 
beginning with the lance and continuing with the sword ; 
the insults hurled at the hero from castle walls, and his 
reception when he has entered them. All these resem- 
blances in material, and actors — among whom the beneficent 



■PP 






ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 107 

fairy is not to be overlooked — emphasize the near relation- 
ship of the romances of chivalry to the poems of the 
Breton cycle. To go further and endeavor to establish a 
definite line of descent from Twain to Amadis is not possible, 
inasmuch as the circumstances and birth of the hero, in the 
latter, point to some particular story unknown to the 
present day, and which very likely may have been told in a 
romance that has forever disappeared. 

Though the story of Twain always remained, so far as 
we now know, in the form it received from the poet of 
Champagne, many other accounts of the deeds of Arthur's 
knights have been handed down to posterity in prose as 
well as verse. It was these prose versions — which seem to 
have been composed in the first five decades of the 
thirteenth century — that attracted the attention and admir- 
ation of contemporary readers. While their freedom from 
the restraints of verse and rhyme allowed their compilers 
to exercise their wits by the invention of new exploits and 
more wonderful adventures, yet in taking this liberty, 
their narrative, which appealed all the more to the sympathy 
of their audience, lost nothing in interest, but gained in 
connectedness and even in taste and style. With the vogue 
of French literature the enthusiasm for these, its best ex- 
amples of prose writing, spread beyond the limits of French 
territory, and caused them to be looked upon in foreign 
lands as models of elegant composition, while foreign trans- 
lations followed close on this introduction of the originals. 

In the Spanish peninsula the stories of Tristan and Merlin 
won especial favor among the nobility and the people, and no 
doubt aroused ambitious scribes to gain glory and profit 
for themselves by imitating them in the romances of 
chivalry. At least the latter borrowed freely from the 
Breton tales at every turn of the narrative, and had no 
scruple in appropriating the most characteristic features of 
their predecessors, as a comparison of Twain and Amadis 



lo8 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

clearly shows. Furthermore it is possible that the incidents 
in the early career of the knights-errant were suggested by 
the youthful experiences of the Breton heroes. Amadis 
and his successors were royal foundlings, like Arthur, and 
castaways, like Merlin. Then, too, the topography of the 
romances of chivalry possesses that charming indefinite- 
ness which distinguishes the localities of the Round 
Table's valorous deeds, though their subject and its work- 
ing-out reveal an unmistakable desire in their authors to 
be looked upon almost as historical novelists, even if they 
do place their courts and realms under the sway of fanciful 
rulers. 

But the tales of the Breton cycle did not provide the 
romances of chivalry with all their material. Or if they did 
at first, later expansions of the story drew on other sources 
besides these. It would indeed be strange if all the epic 
poems relating to Charlemagne, his race, and his vassals, 
and the many versions which they received in prose, had 
passed away without leaving a trace of their influence on 
the heirs of mediaeval fiction. The national epic, to be 
sure, was popular, outside of France, in Italy alone. In 
Spain and England it was the court of King Arthur which 
overshadowed the imperial household at the head of the 
Western Empire. The glory of the twelve paladins was 
probably too exclusive, too patriotic, to prove of much 
interest to other nations. At all events they had no par- 
ticular reason to praise them, and it is chiefly those works 
of the Carolingian cycle, which transport the scene of action 
beyond the limits of Europe, and summon united Christen- 
dom against the infidel, that were incorporated into the 
literature of foreign peoples. 

It is curious to see how this selection from the various 
traditions of the mediaeval French poems affected the 
romances of chivalry. From what we know of the first 
specimens among them, and of Amadis of Gaul in particular, 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 1 09 

it would seem that the romancer began his work with 
the influence of the Arthurian legends strong upon him. 
Then, after the interest in adventures from this source had 
subsided, he would turn to the tales of Eastern marvels, 
and join the fabulous history of Constantinople and Syria 
to the accounts of feudal Europe and the magic of the 
Celtic mysteries. 

Not all of these stories of the East, however, are to be 
charged to the credit of the Carolingian epic. Already in 
the first years of the twelfth century there had appeared in 
French verse strange recitals of the deeds and daring of 
the great hero of antiquity, Alexander. These vernacular 
versions were based on Latin narratives and forged accounts 
of his life and career, which had been invented at Alex- 
andria. Magic and superstition occupied by far the larger 
place in them, while the facts of history formed merely the 
outline. But they suited the times. Hardly had these 
stories found their way into French when they became one 
of the favorite themes of mediaeval literature. Successive 
generations of poets tried their hand at them, translators 
carried them into foreign lands, and by the end of the 
thirteenth century the series of poems on Alexander had 
grown to epic proportions, and had become domesticated 
among the household traditions of all the nations of 
western Europe. As a consequence of this universal 
adoption they became common property, and could be 
taken out of their original setting and placed in any new 
one, according to the momentary fancy of the borrower. 

The trace of this Eastern addition to the literature of 
the West is easily followed from its very beginning. At 
first it is to be recognized by the elaborate descriptions 
of rooms, furniture, and buildings, whose luxury and mag- 
nificence had appealed to the Frankish pilgrims and Cru- 
saders. Later, in the adventures of Christian heroes 
among the infidels who had conquered Palestine and were 



no ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

threatening Constantinople, the imprisonment and suffering 
which the Knights of the Cross endured, their prowess in 
single combat, and the talent which they possessed — to their 
worldly advantage — of setting fire to the combustible sub- 
stances, already prepared for love's torch, in the hearts of 
the bewitching Saracen princesses. So when the romancers 
of chivalry succeeded the poets of gallantry, and started on 
their prose narratives, which were to develop into the future 
novels, they found their material all mixed to their use. A 
striking instance in support of this view of the mediaeval 
mingling of ideas, is furnished by a French poem of the 
twelfth century, Huon de Bordeaux. Its author is unknown, 
but his work, which is a singular compound of French 
heroic poetry, of Celtic tales, and of Eastern superstitions, 
has been always popular in all its changing forms. The 
beginning of the story is in true epic style. Huon, a knight 
of Charlemagne's court, has won renown by his warlike 
deeds, and has received from the emperor an absurd com- 
mission, which is to be performed in the Orient. To reach 
the region of his task Huon must pass through an enchanted 
forest, where his arms are of no avail. From its perils, 
however, he is rescued by the sorcery of the dwarf, Oberon, 
well known to literary fame. Passing through one trial 
of magic art after another, Huon, led by his cunning guide, 
finally emerges from the dangerous wood and eventually 
arrives in Babylon. He is welcomed at the sultan's court, 
wins the love of the imperial princess, Esclarmonde, repays 
her affection by converting her to Christianity, and gives 
effective aid to the sultan in subduing that monarch's 
enemies. Later, on his return to France, Huon recovers, 
through Oberon's assistance, his ancestral inheritance, con- 
fiscated during his absence. 

The advent of stories of Eastern adventure into the 
national epic of France is seen — as in this example of Huon 
de Bordeaux — to be prompted both by a desire to describe 






ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. HI 

the marvelous and luxurious for the benefit of the rough 
warriors of Gaul, and by the desire of the poet to gain a 
larger circle of readers with the account of a love affair — in 
his time a novelty, so far as the Carolingian cycle of poems 
was concerned. Love had held hitherto but a very small 
place in the careers of the vassals of Charlemagne ; and 
whether this new departure in expanding the erotic element 
of the cycle was original with the author of Hnon de Bor- 
deaux or not, it is certain that it entered into high favor not 
long afterward, and rivaled in extent, and perhaps sur- 
passed in interest, the conventional recitals of conquests 
and joustings. We are not surprised, then, to find in a poem 
of the fourteenth century, written on Italian soil, where the 
warlike tradition might be supposed to have less vitality 
and less power of resistance than in France, that this story 
of love in the East, and the adventures which accom- 
pany it, are ascribed to no other than the great national 
hero, to Roland himself. In the poem in question, the 
Entree de Spagne, written by a certain Niccolo of Verona, 
Roland claims some of the attributes of the knights-errant 
of the later novels. His birth, like that of Amadis, takes 
place before the marriage of his parents. He grows up at 
the court of the great emperor, follows him in his wars, and 
accompanies him to Spain. But during the campaign he 
quarrels with his sovereign, leaves the French camp, and, 
coming to the sea, embarks on a merchant vessel. A 
storm drives his craft on the coast of Arabia. Roland, 
nothing daunted, journeys overland and reaches at last the 
court of Persia, whose king he rescues from his enemies. 
By this act he naturally attracts the gratitude and love of 
the Saracen princess, which he declines out of sheer fidelity 
to his first love in France, the tender-hearted Alda. Yet 
he takes some slight interest in the lady's brother, Samson, 
converts him speedily, knights him as a Christian, and takes 
ship with him for the West. On their way, which is by land 



H2 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

as well as by sea, they are challenged to mortal combat by 
two of Roland's friends, who have been sent in search of 
him, and who do not recognize him until the fight is ended 
without loss to either side. When they reach Spain they 
meet a hermit who kindly tells Roland of his approaching 
death at Roncesvalles, and the poem returns to the normal 
epic tradition. 

Similar digressions from the beaten track of exploits 
which were confined to western Europe enliven the narra- 
tive of many poems subsequent to the Entree de Spagne, 
and were probably not without influence on the later books 
of Amadis and the other romances of chivalry. There is, in 
fact, another version of this journey of Roland and Samson 
from the East to the West, which may be of too late a date 
to have entered into the composition of the romances, but 
which is none the less worth citing as an indication of the 
popularity of such adventures. It tells how the two knights, 
in ship on their way to Spain, are wrecked on a desert 
island, where they are forced to encounter monsters and en- 
chantments, which only their unwavering faith in the true 
belief dispels. Corresponding episodes occupy a good 
share of the romances of chivalry, and very likely could be 
traced — were the intermediate links at hand — either to this 
variant of the Entree de Spag/ie, or perhaps to a story which 
is the source of both accounts. 

It will be noticed that the scene of the poems last cited 
as predecessors of the romances of chivalry is laid in the 
actual territory which gave birth to the latter, Spain. And 
now that we are once on Castilian soil it may be well to 
see whether any other poem of the French epic has made 
the peninsula the theater of its action. Long before the 
Italian poet wrote out the Entree de Spagne, two centuries 
earlier at least, an unknown rhymer of France composed a 
long account of French exploits in Italy, and the overthrow 
by Roland's friend, Oliver, of a pagan champion, the giant 



HT 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 1 13 

Fierabras. This episode afterward became separated from 
the rest of the narrative, the place of action was transferred 
to Spain, and the combat and its results were revised and 
expanded, about the year 11 70, into an independent poem, 
Fierabras, named after the Saracen hero. In its new form 
the story tells how Oliver, advancing to fight the giant, was 
taunted by many boasts and insults, and how, after the 
battle was joined, the horses of the champions had a joust- 
ing on their own account. Fierabras is, of course, worsted, 
but instead of being by that event only hardened in his 
sins, he repents, accepts Christianity, and joins the escort 
of his conqueror. 

Oliver and his friends continue the course of their adven- 
tures and prosper in them until they are surprised by the 
Saracens, made prisoners, and thrown into a dungeon, 
which is below sea-level and is flooded by the tide. Aid 
reaches them, however, in the shape of the emir's daughter, 
the sister of Fierabras, who is in love with one of the 
French knights. Meanwhile Charlemagne, anxious about 
their fate, sends ambassadors to the emir to treat with 
him. To reach the castle the embassy must pass over the 
high and strong bridge of Mantrible, .which is defended 
by a huge giantess armed with a heavy mace. The diplo- 
mats, however, are too wily for this guard. They elude her, 
pass the bridge, and come to the castle, where the princess 
leads them to their friends. Thus united they fall on the 
infidels at dinner, slay them, and make themselves masters 
of the castle, in which they are besieged later by the whole 
Saracen army. Many exploits and brave deeds while away 
the weary hours. But the emperor hears of their plight 
and advances to their relief with the whole strength of 
the Christian host. Again the defenders of the faith are 
stopped by the bridge and its champion, who is no longer 
of the gentler sex, but a fierce and terrible giant. Below 
the bridge the stream runs deep and fast. There is no 



114 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

place to ford it, and no way to navigate it. No resource 
remains to the French leader but to force the passage. A 
furious fight ensues at the first onslaught. Long does 
victory hang in the balance, but at length the giant weakens, 
falters, is beaten down, and after him his wife, an enormous 
giantess, who signalizes her discomfiture by emitting, as she 
expires, a blinding cloud of smoke. 

These are the main incidents in Fierabras that connect 
it with the romances of chivalry. Whether the poem 
appealed to the Spaniards through it own intrinsic merits, 
or whether they welcomed it because the deeds it narrated 
were located in Spain, it is certain that it became very pop- 
ular among them, and influenced the formation of the later 
novels. For these reproduced bridge fights, giants, and 
giantesses, so akin to those of Fierabras, even down to the 
descriptions of details, that one can hardly believe three 
centuries had passed between the appearance of the model 
and the date of its imitations. And in this respect they 
illustrate the extraordinary hold of successful invention on 
the popular fancy, and the great lack of originality, char- 
acteristic of all the vernacular work of mediaeval literature. 

Besides monsters which may be said to be related to 
human beings, there are, in the romances of chivalry, animals 
and wild beasts which perhaps go back for suggestions 
of their presence to the heroic epic of France, where the 
founder of the imperial dynasty, Pippin, is seen in a hand- 
to-hand struggle with a lion. A lion protects Octavian, 
another of the Carolingian heroes, as the lion guarded 
Iwain. In the dreams of the emperor and of his paladins, 
portents are foreboded and personified by the likenesses of 
savage beasts. Yet it would be straining the point beyond 
what is reasonable to claim that the romances borrowed 
this part of their material from such minor instances, and 
it is more likely that stones resembling the account of 
Iwain's career offered all the examples necessary to the 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 115 

romancers' purpose. But in the case of another and more 
important auxiliary in exciting interest in the developments 
of the novels, the intervention of magic and the magician, 
the poems relating to the peers of Charlemagne may have 
been equally productive with the stories of Celtic adven- 
ture. The former may indeed have borrowed from the 
latter, yet, if this were so, they expanded and defined their 
loans and lent them in turn to the romances of chivalry. 
One of the most famous poems in the whole national cycle, 
second in reputation to Roland alone, is Renaud de Mon- 
tauban, and one of the leading characters in this poem is a 
necromancer, Maugis by name. His part in the action of 
the story is to help by his art his cousin Renaud, and his 
three brothers, against Charlemagne, whose rebellious vas- 
sals they are. Maugis is also, in his leisure moments, a 
pious hermit, and for that reason, perhaps, his sorcery 
is impregnated with benevolence, and harmless in its 
results. Instead of bringing ruin and despair on the ene- 
mies of his house, he mildly rids himself of them, when 
they become too pressing, by sinking them into a deep 
sleep from which a certain herb from over the sea can 
alone awaken them. Or when the necessities of the case 
may be satisfied with a weaker dose of magic, Maugis pre- 
fers -to envelop the emperor's champions in a dense cloud, 
which deprives them, for the moment, of the power to follow 
the fleeing knights. Besides these innocuous gifts of 
enchantment, Maugis is a master of the knowledge of 
healing plants and ointments, and is also able to disguise 
himself beyond recognition with the juice of peculiar 
grasses. 

The author of Renaud de Montauban proposed to himself 
to write a narrative of war and ruse, and he brings in 
Maugis — who, outside of his slight endowments from the 
domain of the supernatural, is a true and blameless knight — 
as an additional, but very subordinate, element of interest. 



n6 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

The idea of sorcery and magic took, however, with a public 
which had been half initiated into the mysteries of the 
Druidical religion by their blundering reproductions in the 
Arthurian cycle of poems, and which was superstitious and 
fearful from its dense ignorance of man and nature. 

Among the credulous readers of the Middle Ages the 
character of Maugis soon became famous. Poets found it 
worth while to multiply his exploits, and half a century 
after the appearance of Re?iaud de Mo/itauban, the occa- 
sional magician of the Aymon family finds himself and his 
deeds the subject of an entire poem, Maugis a Aigremont. 
There the days of his youth and his career as a man are 
related in detail. Like Lancelot, whose education may 
have been in the poet's mind, Maugis is stolen from his 
parents and reared by a fairy. But he is taken from her in 
turn by a Saracen who escapes with him to Sicily, and who 
there sits down under a thorn tree to rest from the fatigue 
of his adventure. Wild beasts come up as he reposes. A 
lion and a leopard fall upon him and tear him to pieces, 
then turn and rend each other. So the child is left without 
any protector, though he is soon found by the fairy Orianda, 
who adopts him and brings him up as her own son. Her 
brother Baudry, who had studied at the famous school of 
Toledo, teaches the youth the arts of magic ; and when he 
is grown to man's stature Maugis disguises himself and sets 
out for the volcanic island of Bocan. Here a huge serpent 
stands on guard against all comers. But Maugis succeeds 
in despatching him, and afterward in catching and master- 
ing the horse Bayard, the object of his quest. With Bayard 
he returns to Sicily and puts to flight an army of Saracens 
which is besieging Orianda. Then, attended by Baudry and 
Bayard he visits Toledo, runs across Charlemagne's army, 
which was at that time in Spain, and employs in its favor 
the power of the enchantments he had learned. 

But it was tit-for-tat in the old epic, and no sooner do 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 117 

the infidels discover the harm which Maugis does them 
than they oppose to him a sorcerer of their own creed, and 
many and frequent are the attempts of each to outwit the 
other. The poet fairly revels in the invention of puerile 
magic, and impartially divides the spells between the two 
sides. The inhabitants of a beleaguered city fancy that it 
is on fire, and that they are surrounded by flames. Maugis 
himself is led to believe that he is attacked by a dragon, 
and his followers think he has gone mad when they see him 
beating the empty air — incidents which are fair samples of 
the methods used to please the mediaeval public. The 
Christian, of course, gets the better in the long run, and 
Maugis' arts triumph finally over the stratagems of his 
rival. But though in this poem the gifts of necromancy are 
the principal theme, still the poet does not depart from the 
beaten track of the epic, and when Maugis is not busy with 
the display of his peculiar powers he fights and makes love 
in the good old way of the Carolingian heroes. He is still 
a feudal knight, and is not the out-and-out magician, who 
became later on the delight of the romances of chivalry. 

Perhaps enough has now been said to satisfy all demands 
and indicate the probable sources of the romances of 
chivalry in the literature of the Middle Ages. It is not 
possible to prove absolutely that these pioneer novels of 
modern times are the direct heirs of the poems and prose 
narratives which formed the body of fiction dear to the 
generations that preceded them. The evidence in the case 
must be wholly circumstantial. Too great a lapse of time 
separated the one set of stories from the other, and we 
have in the intervening literature but vague hints at the 
growth and development of the first and best of the ro- 
mances, Amadis of Gaul. Other currents of mediaeval 
tradition may easily be traced, in spite of serious breaks, 
by the continuity of the leading characters in them. But 
the romances of chivalry introduce names entirely new to 



n8 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

fiction, both of heroes and heroines, of giants and necro- 
mancers, of relatives and friends. Consequently we have no 
clew at all to lead us through the maze of adventures and 
enchantments back to the original story, and are compelled, 
therefore, to select from out of the mass of available mate- 
rial whose history is known to us, typical deeds and striking 
likenesses of plot and action. 

With him who reads the first books of Amadis there can 
be little doubt that they arose from some such model as the 
poem of Iwaifi would furnish. The adventures of the later 
books would require but little alteration to point back to 
the Entree de Spagne, Fierabras, and the series of poems on 
Alexander, while the supernatural element in them may 
be considered as a legitimate expansion of the magic arts 
attributed to Maugis, Orianda, or their great prototype, the 
fairy Morgan. The relation of knight and mistress is such 
as might be found among the romances, the Breton lais, or 
the longer poems of the Round Table. From these simi- 
larities we may draw conclusions which seem at least fairly 
tenable, and affirm with a good degree of confidence that 
in the ideas of love, of knightly exploits, and the super- 
natural, the romances of chivalry are the true descendants 
of the poems of the medieval epic and the court lyric 
of France. 

It is perhaps due to the fact that the romances of chivalry 
grew up in the Spanish peninsula, far away from the locality 
of the adventures they pretend to narrate, that no light at 
all is thrown on them by the writers of France, Italy, or 
England. Nor can any conjectures, regarding their devel- 
opment or authorship, be gained from like fiction in other 
countries. Indeed, but one single prose narrative written 
outside the peninsula (before 1390), which, like the romances 
of chivalry, is independent of the various epic series, while 
deriving its contents from them, has come down to the 
readers of to-day. This is the strange compound which 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 119 

goes under the name, or nickname, of one of its heroes, 
Perceforest. It is not a novel, for it has no plot, nor does 
it possess even an apparent unity of action. Its author 
was not endowed with any constructive sense, and his 
literary merit depends mainly on his talent for good 
description. He was influenced in his undertaking by the 
evident desire to give to the reading public something that 
was new, and in carrying out this desire he jumbled together 
fact and fancy, erudition and superstition, in the most 
ridiculous way. 

He starts out with an itinerary of Great Britain, comes 
soon to its fabulous history, told many times and many 
generations before him, and finally branches out on his 
poetical idea (if we may call it by that name), which con- 
sists in transporting Alexander and his victorious troops 
from India to England. On arriving at the island the first 
care of the king is to give rulers to both England and Scot- 
land. The monarch of the former country, Betis, is soon 
engaged in subduing the enchantments of the forest of 
Glar, inhabited by the magician, Darnant, and a long war 
ensues between the Orientals and the race of the magician. 
Betis, before this, had acquired, by his conquest of the wood, 
his title of Perceforest. His brother, Gaddiffer, the ruler 
of Scotland, moved to emulation by Betis' fame, endeavors 
to overcome the sorcerers of his realm also, and his vassals 
wage with them a never-ending war. Under the reign of 
Gaddiffer's grandson, Julius Caesar invades Britain, and 
after the Romans have withdrawn Christianity is intro- 
duced, in order that a converted member of the Scottish 
royal family may close the list of his house's exploits, by 
preaching the gospel to his ancestors who had departed 
this transitory existence, and were dwelling peacefully 
heathenish in the Island of Life. 

There is not much in Perceforest which concerns the sub- 
ject of this chapter. Its artificial compound of the tradi- 



120 ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

tions about Arthur and Alexander is only too apparent, and 
unlike the romances of chivalry it underwent no long elab- 
oration, which would make of it a new creation in literature. 
Perceforest is merely a literary crazy-quilt, and only be- 
wilders its readers, who cannot readily take the sudden 
leaps with which its author spans his numerous chasms of 
time and place. But in certain of its incidents and details, 
and in a portion of its episodes, it shows that there was 
active in northern Europe the same fanciful tendency 
which the romances of chivalry reveal in the South. The 
place which magic and witchcraft occupy in its pages far 
exceeds the space given up to them in the lines of epic 
poetry, or in the epic prose narratives, and forms its most 
noticeable resemblance to the later books of Amadis. The 
transference of the scene of action to Scotland suggests 
also the topography of the romances of chivalry, and this 
feature is emphasized by a steadfast indefiniteness con- 
cerning the world's surface and territorial divisions. And 
finally in the idea of the Island of Life, where the spirits of 
the great departed hold sweet communion, we have a com- 
promise between the Avalon of the Arthurian legends and 
Firm Island of Amadis of Gaul. 

Yet all these notions combined show no real progress in 
the art of story writing, and are hardly worth citing, when 
compared with the elaborate episodes of a like nature 
which abound in the completed romances. The latter were 
the product of a steady, systematic effort, supported by the 
favor of a whole nation, and extending over a formative 
period of some two centuries, while Perceforest is evidently 
a work of individual initiative, by an author of no especial 
talent. It had no successors so far as is known. The 
North continued to abide by its old traditions of epic story. 
Its prose narratives repeated with unwearying patience the 
deeds of the paladins of Charlemagne and the marvels of 
Celtic Britain, and it was left for the South to inspire the 



ORIGINS OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 121 



mass of inventions it had received from abroad with 
another spirit and a higher life, so that it might give to the 
world in the fullness of time that union of new ideas and 
old exploits, which is the characteristic of the first novels of 
modern literature, the romances of chivalry. 



CHAPTER V. 

SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. AMADIS OF GAUL. 

One of the most striking features of the romances of 
chivalry is this origin of theirs from matter which was wholly 
foreign, in its antecedents, to the land where they came into 
being. The chief among them, Amadis of Gaul, the un- 
doubted creation in its final form of the Spanish peoples, and 
the faithful mirror of their sentiments and aspirations, at the 
time when they were struggling for national existence and 
race unity, contains hardly a mention, even in its concluding 
pages, of a place or a name which can be assigned to the 
Spanish peninsula. Such an entire absence of local pride 
among native authors would be indeed incredible at any 
other stage in the history of the world's literature. Some 
allusions, at least, to their surroundings, or, at best, occa- 
sional expressions of loyalty toward their rulers, would not 
be lacking in the popular stories of any other period. 

But in the Middle Ages and in the centuries following the 
position of writer and reader was different. Excepting 
in court poetry, or in works written to order for some 
patron, there was no thought of time or place in literature. 
The world of fact disappeared before the allurements of 
romancing. On this account it is difficult to determine the 
date and locality of so many productions of mediaeval 
fancy. 

Nor does the subject-matter of the mediaeval poem or nar- 
rative help us out of this uncertainty. An episode or a de- 
scription which was started by some rhymer of talent in the 
tenth century may be found intact, or embellished with 



SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 123 

further details of the same sort, in the fifteenth. Repetition 
and imitation mark deeply this whole age of compilation. 
The vernacular literature, abandoned as it was to the keep- 
ing of the uneducated, came rarely into the hands of a man 
of any originality in invention or vigor in expression. 

And having this condition of literary production in mind, 
we cannot be surprised to find that Spanish topography and 
genealogy play no part in the favorite prose compositions of 
the Spanish nation. 

Naturally, then, this extreme example of mediaeval indiffer- 
ence would lead us to look for the early career of the hero, 
the knight Amadis, among those nations, the English and 
French, which furnished the romance Amadis with its 
material and story. From the beginning of the redemption 
of Spain and Portugal from the Moors, the influence of 
French literature had been widely felt in the rising states of 
the frontier. It was Burgundian nobles who delivered the 
western coast in the eleventh century, and founded the 
throne of Portugal. French knights fought also for Castile 
and Leon, and married even into the royal families. With 
the warriors of the North came the singers of their exploits, 
and French minstrels and Provencal troubadours were soon 
the official poets of Galicia and Aragon. 

Later than the poets, and when the emigration of Cru- 
saders from France to Spain grew less notable in numbers 
and rank, the longer stories of French fiction found their 
way in manuscript, or by word of mouth, into the peninsula. 
In the thirteenth century Apollonius of Tyre was translated 
from a French original into Spanish, while the adventures 
of Alexander received a southern version, after a Latin 
poem composed in France. By the end of the thirteenth 
century those models of fine writing, the prose romances of 
the Arthurian legends, had been done into Spanish and 
Portuguese, and some decades before them the more at- 
tractive romans d'aventure, such as Floire et Blanchefleur, 



124 SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

had reached the South. The themes of the Breton lais 
inspired the poets at the court of King Diniz of Portugal, 
whose reign ended in 1325, while the very ballads of the 
Moorish conquest, and the romances of feudal rivalries 
among the Christians themselves, bear many marks of the 
presence of those epic poems of France which recounted 
events that took place on Spanish soil. And in the midst 
of this foreign importation, which was very likely fully 
naturalized before the idea of Amadis of Gaul had acquired 
any definiteness, it is most significant, for the future de- 
velopment of the romances of chivalry, to notice that the 
testimony of contemporaneous literature affirms that the 
stories of the love and death of Tristan and of Lancelot of 
the Lake were the favorites above all others. 

So the ground had been prepared for many generations 
for the introduction of the marvelous legends of France, 
and the curiosity of the Spanish race had come to look for 
its gratification in fictions invented on foreign soil. The 
Christians of the peninsula were too busy in wresting their 
patrimony from Moorish dominion to allow themselves that 
leisure from action and from contact with disturbing ele- 
ments, which is imperative for the formation of folk tradi- 
tion. Not that the Spanish genius was in its nature averse 
to story-telling. The legends of Bernardio del Carpio, or of 
the Seven Lords of Lara, and the mystery which enveloped 
the Cid, and made of him an epic hero barely half a century 
after his death, prove rather the contrary. But wars and 
invasions followed one another too quickly for any con- 
siderable development of the national literature. Even 
ballad poetry, that first form of the epic, which has become 
so typical of feudal and crusading Spain, was shut up within 
the poet's breast so long as the minstrel was forced to be 
a warrior. Still national tradition watched for every oppor- 
tunity to escape from its confinement. It stole into the 
eulogies of Charlemagne and his paladins, it transformed the 



SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 125 

freebooters of the southern frontier into loyal knights of 
the Cross, and it even bewitched the recording quills of the 
sober historians. For the romancing spirit of the Spanish 
people sported with the very dates and names of the 
nation's genealogy, and enlivened the great Cronica general 
of Alphonso the Wise with the valiant and dramatic ex- 
ploits of Pelayo and Fernan Gonzalez. It was also from 
France, from a half-historical, half-legendary Provencal 
poem on the first Crusades, that the main part of a Spanish 
chronicle of the beginning of the fourteenth century, the 
Gran Conquista de Ultramar, was taken. 

While the latent authors of the peninsula were too much 
engaged in the solution of the problems of national exist- 
ence to devise many inventions of their own, yet it is clear 
that the desire for fancy's play was out among them in full 
force, and was ready to test its vitality on any material, 
whether of native or foreign creation. We cannot, there- 
fore, accuse the Spaniards of any lack of national pride, be- 
cause they welcomed to their castles and their market-places 
the singers and the legends of France. What they received 
they adapted to themselves. They were in no hurry, but 
took their time with true Spanish dignity. And when they 
had completed the working-over process to their satisfaction, 
they produced again the old stories of feudalism and the 
deeds of chivalry, thoroughly permeated with their national 
spirit, and stamped with their national ideals. They re- 
turned to France what they had borrowed from her, refined, 
purified, and ennobled. 

In the romances of chivalry there is something besides a 
definite plot to distinguish them from the prose versions of 
the Carolingian and Arthurian poems, and this additional 
something is not at all connected with style or literary 
polish, inasmuch as the French Tristan of the thirteenth 
century is decidedly superior, in those qualities, to the later 
Amadis of Gaul. The romances of chivalry cannot boast of 



126 SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

much art, either in their plan or composition, and they were 
not written with aesthetic aims in view. On the contrary, 
they seem to have a distinct didactic bent, like so many 
novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the 
midst of their tales of knight-errantry and magic incanta- 
tions they never lose sight of this ulterior purpose, nor fail to 
draw the intended moral. 

Their French models had aspired to but a portion of this 
teaching. The poems of Chretien and the prose romances 
of the Round Table wished, indeed, to place before their 
readers the social ideal of their time. But this ideal was 
especially chivalrous and gallant. It enjoined the defense 
of the weak and the rescue of the oppressed, but it did not 
require in the defender absolute purity of mind or body. 
The real heroes of mediaeval society were Lancelot and 
Tristan. Its heroines were Guinevere and Iseult. But in 
Spain of the fifteenth century an advance on such views 
could naturally be expected. The times had grown better 
and the race was a more devout one. It was also more 
loyal than were the French of the reign of Philip Augustus. 
Therefore the romances of chivalry, which became the fav- 
orite literature of the Spanish people, and which represent, 
consequently, its feelings and aspirations, put before their 
readers a higher standard of chivalry and honor than did 
their epic progenitors. 

In the hero, Amadis of Gaul, they endeavored to present 
a pattern of a true and perfect knight, whose fidelity to his 
lawful mistress should equal his prowess in the defense of 
the feeble, and whose loyalty to his sovereign should corre- 
spond to the greatness of his self-sacrifice for the good of 
others. He was to be the living pattern for the nobility of 
Spain. In him were to be reconciled the virtues of the man 
and the duties of the subject, and his career, both in love 
and in war, was to encourage higher notions of social inter- 
course, and a deeper sense of devotion to the welfare of the 



SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 127 

state, among the doughty chieftains of the Moorish border 
and the restless vassals of Castile and Aragon. Half a 
century after the appearance of Amadis of Gaul there expired 
on the plains of Lombardy, dying in defense of his country 
and his king, a perfect knight of actual life, who probably 
had never read of the perfect knight of fiction, but who, 
though a foreigner, realized in his character that ideal 
more fully, perhaps, than any noble of Spain, the Chevalier 
Bayard, " sans peur et sans reproche." 

It is not to be supposed from this digressive eulogy that 
all the heroes and heroines of the romances of chivalry were 
on the high level of Amadis and Oriana. Some approached 
them in chivalry and virtue, and others fell away, far away, 
from the standard set by the leaders. Amadis himself has 
a foil in his half brother, Galaor, who equals the knights- 
errant of the Breton legends in the lack of fidelity to one 
love, and in his chivalrous readiness to succor the defense- 
less wherever they are found. Indeed, it would seem that 
in many of the minor characters of the romances there had 
been no improvement over the French mediaeval conception 
of honor and duty, and that these actors had been retained 
in order to place in greater relief, by the contrast they 
afforded, the virtues of the men and women who were espe- 
cially dear to the Spanish heart. And to realize the progress 
which had been made in social and political morals from 
the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, there is no better 
way than to compare the character and purposes of the 
chief heroes in the romances of chivalry with their subor- 
dinates, who represent the survival of the traditions of the 
Round Table. In the latter, for instance, Lancelot was 
faithful to his love. Yet with him it was a guilty love, and 
brought, together with this fidelity, perjury toward his sove- 
reign, whom he dishonored. Tristan loved by the force of 
a magic potion, and often lamented the supernatural power 
which the draught exercised so tyranically over him. 



128 SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

On the other hand, it is not true that faithful lovers in tne 
highest sense of the word, were wanting in mediaeval French 
literature. While they may be but few in the tales of 
Arthur's court, they are_ comparatively numerous in one of 
the supposed sources of our romances of chivalry, the 
ro7iians d'aventure. One of these, the Roman de la Violette 
(belonging to the third decade of the thirteenth century), 
which is repeated in part by Shakspere's Cy?nbeline, keeps 
its hero Girard always faithful to his mistress, in spite of 
the many temptations which assail him during a long series of 
exploits and adventures, and of wrongs set to rights. So in 
Amadas et Idoine of about the same period — a poem which 
has often been appealed to as furnishing the prototype of 
Amadis of Gaul, owing to the resemblance between the 
heroes' names — the lover is repelled at first by his lady's 
severity, but afterward wins her pity through his unweary- 
ing constancy, and finally, when he finds that she is to be 
given to a rival in marriage, loses his senses in despair, and 
is not cured of his madness until her tender care and nurs- 
ing have come to his aid. Still we must remember that 
these perfect characters are found in separate and isolated 
poems, and are not those chosen types of chivalry that are 
celebrated by a whole series, like the poems of the Breton 
cycle. 

At their very best the ideal knights of the Middle Ages 
were loyal only to their mistress. In their conception of 
duty their sovereign held but a subordinate place. But 
Amadis of Gaul is ever loyal to both lady and monarch, 
whether in favor or disgrace, whether honored or slandered. 
He is always true to his highest conceptions of virtue, and 
therefore is the personification of knightly chivalry, fidelity, 
and honor. 

It would be too much to claim that this ideal of a true and 
perfect knight was developed nowhere but in Spain, espe- 
cially when we see that its best representative was the cham- 



m—k 



SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 129 

pion of France. Yet it seems safe to assert that in the 
peninsula the notions of chivalry and knightly honor were 
more generally felt than elsewhere, and had penetrated 
deeper into the various classes of society. At least it is in 
Spain alone that literature made itself the standard-bearer 
of such conceptions, and the romances of chivalry are the 
only works of the time in which literature remained aristo- 
cratic. Outside of her borders feudalism and the social 
structure of the Middle Ages had given way before the con- 
solidation of royal power, and the growing strength of the 
merchant class. Literature in the other parts of Europe 
had followed in the track of this revolution, and had adapted 
itself to the taste of the new masters of the state. In Italy 
there had never been a nobility which had possessed suffi- 
cient power to direct prose and poetry. Magistrates and 
bankers had supported impecunious authors from the very 
beginnings of Italian literature. In France the power of the 
noble houses had been broken by the vicissitudes of the Hun- 
dred Years' War and the increase of an urban population, 
which looked to one sovereign, the king, for protection 
against his vassals. Thus there arose a Louis XI. and a lit- 
erature addressed to tradesmen. Charles of Orleans and his 
school of poets were an anachronism in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and their rhymes were unknown to the general public. 
So in Germany and England the new social conditions were 
reflected in a new and plebeian style of writing. 

But in Spain and Portugal the situation was entirely dif- 
ferent. The presence of the Moors, demanding ever-recur- 
ring crusades in behalf of the Christian faith, and the 
independence of the provinces, which had been preserved 
by the absorption of the population in the work of territorial 
redemption, had perpetuated the surroundings of feudal 
times, and prolonged for generations the spirit and institu- 
tions of the Middle Ages. Thus each petty noble had 
remained practically his own master. Far from repressing 



13° SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

or checking the exercise of individual force and initiative, 
the monarchs of the different states of the peninsula 
spurred on each warlike adventurer to repeated incursions 
into the lands held by the infidels, and confirmed him in 
the possession of whatever domain he might wrest from 
them to the profit of the general cause of Christianity. 
Along the frontier many noble houses were thus established, 
which owed but slight allegiance to any over-lord. The 
principle of individualism, though in a righteous cause, was 
developed to the highest extent and held in the greatest 
honor, and a career of knight-errantry was regarded by the 
whole people as affording a most material bulwark to the 
safety of the ancestral religion ; while the daring expeditions 
of the independent Christian knights against the common 
enemy fostered the popular admiration for any personal 
deed at arms. 

When the Moslems would afford but little glory, the 
restless nobles must perforce direct their energy toward 
feuds and joustings within Spanish territory, and the 
northern kingdoms were fairly overrun with knights seeking 
adventures. A short chronicle of the fifteenth century has 
handed down to us a record of one of the favorite expedients 
to acquire a reputation for prowess on the field of battle. 
It tells how, in 1434, a knight-errant seized on a bridge near 
the city of Leon, and held it against all comers. And this 
passo honroso is but an instance — perhaps the most note- 
worthy, to be sure — of many others of the same kind. Per- 
sonal prowess was the pass-word to glory in the land, and 
the Crusader was the highest type of those elements which 
had combined for the defense of the nation. And when 
the long-postponed expulsion of the Moslem invaders was 
felt to be at hand, and all Spain could confidently look for- 
ward to the complete supremacy of the native dynasties, 
the enthusiasm and pride of the Spanish people found 
expression in the glorification of the chief agent in the 



SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 131 

attainment of these cherished results, and consecrated, in 
the most popular branch of its literature, the personification 
of those qualities in the chivalry and loyalty of that perfect 
knight, Amadis of Gaul. 

It is impossible to know definitely when the idea of this 
first romance of chivalry began to take shape among the 
legends of the nation. And it is no less difficult to decide 
the exact, or approximate, date when the story of Amadis 
and Oriana made its first appearance before the world. The 
main plot of the romance surely existed, in some embryonic 
form or other, as early as the last part of the thirteenth 
century, and was cultivated by the poets of the court of 
Portugal. For the villancico, which is found in the eleventh 
chapter of the second book of the Spanish Amadis de Gaula, 
and is there said to have been written by Amadis for the 
young princess, Leonoreta, is an adaptation of a poem 
recently discovered in a Portuguese manuscript. The 
author of the poem was a Portuguese poet, Joao Lobeira, 
who is known to have been famous as early as 1258, and 
was still alive in 1285. His name had given rise to a curious 
confusion in literary history, which was corrected by the 
publication of this manuscript and its contents. A chroni- 
cle of the fifteenth century had claimed that the first author, 
or rather the author of the first edition, of Amadis de 
Gaula, was Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese gentleman of 
the later fourteenth century. But this assertion was rather 
of an enigma to scholars. For it is distinctly stated in the 
fortieth chapter of the first book of Amadis, that the out- 
come of the love of Briolanja for the faithful hero had been 
changed to suit the views of Don Alphonso, Infant of Portu- 
gal. This prince was born in 1263 and died in 1312, and 
consequently the story must have undergone, if we are to 
judge from the separate versions of the Briolanja episode, 
at least two editions before Vasco de Lobeira was old enough 
to have taken a hand in its formation. Another proof of the 



I3 2 SPIRIT OF THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 

priority of the romance to this Lobeira's time is furnished 
by the chronicler, Pedro Lopez de Ayala. In a didactic 
poem, called the Ri?nado de Palacio, this author complains 
of wasted hours passed in listening to such lies as Lance- 
lot, Amadis, and other follies. Ayala lived from 1332 to 
1407, and the lost time he laments must have been spent in 
his youth. 

Another reference belonging to the fourteenth century 
throws more light on the size, at that time, of Amadis de 
Gaula. Pedro Ferrus, a Spanish poet, contemporary with 
Ayala, addressed to the latter some verses in which there 
are allusions to events that occurred before 1379. Among 
these verses is a strophe devoted to our romance, which 
expressly states that it was then composed of three books. 
Other poems found in this same collection (the Cancionero 
de Baena) bear witness to the adventures and renown of 
Amadis and Oriana. So from all the testimony available, 
and from the fact that a Lobeira was the author of the vil- 
lancico which was the original of the poem in Amadis 
addressed to the Princess Leonoreta, it would seem that the 
chronicler of the fifteenth century had blundered in his 
statement of the maker of the romance, and that, instead of 
Vasco de Lobeira, the current tradition of his age assigned 
the merit of its composition to the thirteenth century poet, 
Joao Lobeira. 

If this view of the question is correct, and if our 
romance of chivalry looks back to Joao Lobeira for a spon- 
sor, the appearance of a French story on Portuguese soil 
and its complete naturalization in the Spanish peninsula is 
not hard to understand. For Lobeira was a member of a 
poetical circle whose fame, with the fame of its patron, has 
come down to modern times in undiminished glory. King 
Diniz (or Denis), who ascended the throne of Portugal in 
i2 79 and reigned until the year 1325, is known as the great 
administrator and civilizer of his country. He fostered 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 133 

literature and learning by the establishment of the great 
University of Portugal, and by throwing open the privileges 
of his court to native and foreign poets and writers. The 
king himself was not the meanest minstrel of them all. 
Under his father, Alphonso, the influence of troubadour 
poetry, and the romances and lais of northern France, had 
already created a race of poets, who cultivated not only the 
love songs of their models, but also used the art thus 
learned in elaborating the traditions and legends of the 
Portuguese people itself. Diniz continued and expanded 
the good work thus begun. He himself was taught by a 
Provencal poet, Aimeric, from Cahors. His own songs, 
preserved in a Vatican manuscript, amounting in number to 
138, are swayed by the two influences of troubadour versi- 
fication and national tradition. And the poets who were 
attracted to his court and lived on his bounty cultivated 
all the themes of love and adventure which were at that time 
being celebrated throughout the states of western Europe. 
They knew of Charlemagne, of Roland and his ivory horn, 
of Tristan, of Lancelot of the Lake, of Merlin, and of 
the love and trials of Flore and Blanchefleur. The prose 
romances of the Breton cycle went into a Spanish transla- 
tion about the middle of Diniz's reign and must have soon 
been carried to the various literary groups of the peninsula. 
The various romans cfaventure, one of which we suppose 
Amadis at its origin to have been, had also reached the 
poets of the Southwest in a form more or less complete. 

It seems probable that these various contributions of 
foreign poetical and prose tradition aroused among the 
ingenious writers of Portugal and Spain a spirit of emula- 
tion, and that, unwilling to copy them directly, the most 
enterprising talents of this new literary set conceived the 
notion of combining them to the glory of their own inventive 
spirit. In other words, it is plausible to suppose that the 
Portuguese authors of the time of Alphonso and Diniz took 



134 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

some roman d'aventure, which had grown out of some 
chivalrous romance, like Rainaud, and which had perhaps 
already admitted many episodes taken from the poems of 
the Breton cycle, turned it into prose (if indeed it had not 
reached them in a form of mingled prose and verse, like 
Aucassin et Nicolette), added to it scenes from the careers of 
Lancelot and Tristan, or similar inventions of their own, 
inserted into the midst of the prose narrative lyric poems, 
like the " Leonoreta sin roseta " of Amadis (a process which 
had been already employed in France in Giiillaume de Dole, 
and elsewhere), and finally offered to their patrons the story, 
thus revised and expanded, as a novelty in fiction. 

Such a theory of the origin of the romance of chivalry 
is based, of course, entirely upon supposition. The entire 
absence of any facts in the case forbids any solution of the 
question which might be supported by proofs. But eclectic 
literature, if we may call it by that name, was not unknown 
to the Middle Ages. Huon de Bordeaux is a mixture of 
three different sources of tradition, Ille et Galeron of two. 
The Holy Grail itself consists of two elements, as strongly 
opposed to each other as were the Druidical rites to the 
usages of Christianity, while Perceforest, as we have seen, 
was a rough attempt at mingling stories, which in their 
origin and development were entirely alien to one another. 
So Amadis of Gaul may be a union of various literary tradi- 
tions and may be, in a limited degree, considered as the 
residuary legatee of mediaeval fiction. Whether it received 
its greatest development at the hands of Joao Lobeira or not, 
it evidently was no more sacred to professional revisers than 
were the other literary compositions of the time; and it must 
have been worked over and adapted to the tastes of succes- 
sive generations, as was the case with the poems and prose 
versions of the Carolingian cycle. 

Thus it continually renewed its popularity among the 
common people of both Portugal and Spain, while, to judge 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 135 

by Ayala's lament, it seems to have had its attractions for 
the nobility as well. In this way Vasco de Lobeira and 
nameless hack-writers may have had a hand in the many 
editions it received, and may have brought it down to the 
time when a more ambitious author sought, in a fresh re- 
vision, an opportunity to display his own gifts of story- 
telling, and a chance to gain without much expenditure of 
energy a lasting renown. For Amadis de Gaula was already 
the most popular book, in the widest sense of the word, in 
the peninsula, and had thoroughly incorporated into itself 
the national spirit and character. Consequently it needed 
only a literary finish, and perhaps certain refinements of 
expression and better connection between its episodes, to 
make it most welcome to the educated and polished circles 
of society, and thus raise it from the somewhat vulgar 
modesty of a chapbook to the calmer dignity of literature. 
The ambitious writer who gave to Amadis de Gaula its 
final shape was Garci-Ordonez de Montalvo. He was gov- 
ernor of the city of Medina del Campo, in Old Castile, and 
of course a soldier in the armies of that province. But this 
is all that is known of him. From hints dropped by himself 
in his writings he may have been a middle-aged man before 
Granada was taken, in 1492. It is the generally received 
opinion that he completed his manuscript not far from the 
year 1470, and that his own statement of what he had done, 
and the reasons for it, is fairly reliable. This statement is 
found in a preface which alludes to the conquest of Granada, 
and which is probably not much later than that great event. 
There Montalvo affirms he was incited to his undertaking 
by the example of the ancient historians, who had chron- 
icled the great wars of their races, and by the exploits of 
such heroes of the Middle Ages as Godfrey of Bouillon. So 
he would aspire to write history also, but not of the greater 
men and deeds. Only the things of less importance, based 
on fancy rather than fact, he deemed his pen to be equal to, 



I3 6 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

and these things he thought capable of handing his name 
down to posterity. He had therefore taken up the story of 
Amadis of Gaul, and corrected the three books extant before 
his day, freeing them of their faults of language and style. 
To the three he added a fourth, drawn partly from them 
and partly from his own invention, and the four, thus con- 
stituted from liis original text, he now supplemented by a 
fifth, which was to be a sequel to them. And all this effort 
was made, not for his own glory only, but also to encourage 
in the youth of Spain the knowledge of knightly arms, and 
to keep alive in the world the memories of chivalry. 

The exact year of the publication of Montalvo's magnum 
opus is not known. Its author evidently considered the state 
of the public mind after the Moorish conquest as favorable 
to its reception, and very likely wrote his preface with pub- 
lication in view at that time. But there is no evidence now 
at hand which points to an edition before 15 10, at the very 
earliest. So the actual marketing of Amadis de Gaula , as a 
piece of literature, is enveloped in the same obscurity as its 
rise among the fictions of the people. And it is interesting 
to note that, when it did appear, this most characteristic 
offspring of the Middle Ages was made acceptable to the 
literary classes by the merits of its style and composition, 
conceptions which came into the modern world through the 
revival of the literature of antiquity, as Montalvo himself 
implies. 

To give an idea of the contents of Amadis de Gaula will 
require a long and perhaps tiresome analysis, and may only 
be excused on the plea of regrettable necessity. For the first 
four books of Montalvo, which include all the elements of 
the original story and to which we shall limit our outline, 
comprise by themselves some four hundred pages of closely 
printed text, containing not less than eleven hundred words 
to a page. This would make a novel somewhat longer, by 
one hundred or more pages, than Thackeray's Virginians, 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 137 

but in amount of interest several score of times shorter than 
that volume. The size is a good indicator of the credulity 
and the leisure of the social circles of the sixteenth century. 

Not many years after the Passion of our Lord, Garinter, 
king of Little Britain, straying from the chase, came upon 
a knight engaged in mortal combat with two of his 
rebellious subjects. The victory finally remained to the 
knight, who killed his opponents, and slew also a lion, 
which soon after appeared on the scene in hot pursuit of a 
stag. The knight in question proved to be Perion, king of 
Gaula (evidently Wales). Welcomed to Garinter's court, 
this lord lost no time in winning the love of Elisena, the 
royal princess, though in the affair he disregards the 
warning of a dream. Hardly has he obtained her full 
affection when he is constrained to return to his kingdom. 
As a pledge of his fidelity he leaves with Elisena his sword 
and his signet ring. On the birth of a son, the princess, 
hearing no tidings of her lover and fearing the shame of 
discovery, caused her maid to place the child in a chest, 
into which she put also the sword and ring, and a tablet on 
which was written his name, Amadis. She then lowered 
the chest into the stream which flowed by the castle, it 
was borne to the sea and picked up by a Scottish knight, 
Gandales, who was returning home from abroad» The 
vessel reached Scotland in safety, the boy was adopted into 
his rescuer's family, and brought up with the son of the 
house, Gandalin, under the name of the Child of the Sea. 

Meanwhile Perion, at his court in Wales, has summoned 
a council of wise men to interpret his evil dream, but 
succeeds only in drawing out a prophecy from an unknown 
maiden. This prophecy she has no sooner given in Wales, 
than she hastens to Scotland to utter the same oracle to 
Gandales, whom she also tells her name, Urganda the 
Unknown. Time passes by. The Child of the Sea, when 



138 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

hardly three years old, attracts the attention of Languines, 
king of Scotland, and is summoned to court. But he 
refuses to go until Gandalin is also invited. Now, during 
these few years Garinter had died in Little Britain ; Elisena, 
assailed by Languines, had sent to Perion for aid, and the 
procrastinating lovers had at last been married. But from 
fear of Perion's anger the princess had denied the birth of 
any child. A daughter, Melicia, and another son, Galaor, 
had blessed their lawful union, but the latter had been 
seized one day by Gandalac, a giant of Lyonnesse, and 
carried away to his island, where a hermit protected the 
child and adopted him. 

It is time to introduce a heroine equal to these days of 
youthful precocity. This is Oriana, daughter of Lisuarte, 
crown prince of England. Inasmuch as she had suffered 
from sea-sickness (a weakness we have never seen attributed 
to a modern heroine), her father had left her in Scotland on 
his way to Denmark, whither he was going to receive the 
crown, to which he was heir through his wife, Brisena. 
Oriana now at the Scottish court receives as page the Child 
of the Sea. From this relationship springs their perfect 
love. When the boy had reached the age of fifteen, and 
was already noted for his noble spirit and his deeds at arms, 
Perion came to Scotland, seeking aid against Abies, king of 
Ireland. While there the king consented to knight his son, 
not knowing him. Now, the Child of the Sea, having 
Gandalin as squire, begs leave of absence from his mistress, 
and sets out to win fame in her service as a knight-errant. 
Adventures come upon him thick and fast. Girded with 
his father's sword, wearing his ring, and aided by Urganda, 
who had brought him his lance, the Child of the Sea 
avenges wrongs, delivers oppressed maidens, chastises evil- 
doers, and frees knights from imprisonment, even to king 
Perion himself. And in the midst of this turmoil and 
strife he is ever mindful of all the usages of chivalry, from 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 139 

the protracted ceremonies of conferring knighthood to the 
despatching of his prisoners to his mistress at the court. 
A true lover and a mighty champion is he, and worthy of 
the good old times. For at the present day of degener- 
ation how could we expect a youth of fifteen to emerge alive 
and victorious from an encounter like the following ? 

" Then they started their horses at great speed and struck 
with their lances each other's shields, which were straightway 
broken, and their harness likewise and the lance heads were 
buried in each other's flesh. And then they came together 
with their bodies and shields and helmets, one against the 
other so bravely that both were thrown to the ground. 
But now it was favorable to the Child of the Sea, who got 
up with the reins in his hand, and Galpano stood up badly 
misused, and they laid hands to their swords and raised 
their shields before them and struck at each other so mightily 
that fear came over those who looked thereon. From their 
shields fell many splinters and from their harness many 
strips, and their helmets were battered and broken ; so that 
the ground on which they strove was dyed red with blood." 

While her knight is doing all these deeds in her honor, 
Oriana is living at the English court, to which she returned 
at the command of her father, accompanied by Mabilia, the 
princess of Scotland. One day, finding in her possession the 
tablet which the Child of the Sea had given her at his de- 
parture, Oriana bursts into tears and presses the tablet so 
hard that it breaks. She looks within and finds there writ- 
ten : "This is Amadis Sin-tiempo, the son of a king." 
Much comforted at this discovery she hastens to share it 
with her knight, and sends the paper to Amadis. He, how- 
ever, relaxes not at all his efforts to win glory, but hits and 
hews with mind intent on his mistress alone. Thus he goes 
from adventure to adventure, until finally he is recognized 
one day by his ring to be the son of Perion. 

Here the author has reached the solution of one part of 



14° AM A BIS OF GAUL. 

his plot, the recognition of Amadis by his parents, and 
would seem to be on the highroad to the end of his story. 
But not so simply did the men of the Middle Ages look on 
their literary tasks. Some chapters back the writer had care- 
fully laid the foundation for a new series of adventures, and 
Amadis, instead of hastening to Oriana and claiming her hand 
instanter, like the impetuous heroes of the present day, 
feels he has first a mission to accomplish, and starts off in 
search of his kidnapped brother, Galaor. With the aid of 
Urganda the brothers soon meet, but remain unknown to 
each other, and the elder consents to knight the younger. 
After the ceremony Galaor finds a sword hanging from a 
bough, Urganda's gift, which he takes, and with it soon over- 
throws a giant. Now the narrative divides itself between 
these two heroes and joins the exploits of one to those of 
the other with great celerity, to the no little confusion and 
weariness of the modern reader. Amadis, on his way to 
the court of England, passes by a castle where he is not 
only refused hospitality, but is in addition reviled from its 
walls by its lord, Dardan, a proceeding with gives rise, in 
the text, to extended reflections on pride. Some time after 
Amadis jousts against Dardan at the court. In the midst 
of the combat he raises his eyes to the seats occupied by the 
spectators and meets the gaze of Oriana. The thought of 
her presence unmans him, and he forgets for a while his 
prowess. But as he yields to his adversary a feeling of 
shame comes over him, he rallies and unhorses Dardan, who 
brings the contest to a tragic end by the murder of his mis- 
tress — who is jeering at his defeat — and by his own suicide. 
The wounds of Amadis are healed that night by an inter- 
view with Oriana at her window — though it must not be 
supposed that this feature of Spanish manners was observed 
by the Northern hero with the impetuosity of the South. 
On the contrary his answer to the greeting which Oriana 
gave him in the presence of their attendants is a good 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 141 

example of the repression practiced on theit feelings by the 
heroes of chivalry. 

" When Oriana saw him she came to the window and said 
to him : ' My lord, may you be much welcome to this land, 
for we have greatly desired you and have taken great pleas- 
ure in your new successes, both in arms and in your recog- 
nition by your father and mother.' Amadis, when he heard 
this, was indeed overcome, but making a greater effort on 
himself than for any other encounter, he said : ' Lady, if 
my manners may not suffice to repay the favor which you 
show me ... do not marvel at it, for my heart is much dis- 
turbed and overcome by sovereign love and does not allow 
my tongue its full liberty ; and as I think all things are 
subject to your gracious remembrance so I am placed in 
subjection by the sight of you, without there being any 
sentiment in me which remains free ; and if I, my lady, 
were so worthy or if my services merited it, I would ask of 
you compassion for this heart in tribulation, before that it 
be entirely undone with tears ; and the favor which I seek 
from you, my lady, I desire not for myself (for when things 
truly loved are attained much more does desire and care 
augment and increase) but because all being accomplished 
would bring that also to an end which never tires of think- 
ing how to serve you.' " 

Oriana seems to comprehend these circumlocutions and 
returns an answer in kind, to which Amadis replies in fewer 
words. And thus the conversation was prolonged until the 
morning. But Amadis is called away from these pleasing 
exercises of linguistic expression to look again for Galaor, 
whose absence from court he begins to regret. This hero, 
however, has taken care of himself very well in his wander- 
ings, has fought many fierce fights, and gained as many 
notable victories. But, unlike Amadis, there is no purpose 
in his exploits, no end beyond them to be attained. He has 
no guiding star, no revered and faithful mistress. His 



142 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

honor is consequently no different from the conventional 
honor of knighthood, as exhibited in the Arthurian roman- 
ces, and the current of his affections changes with the 
gratitude of each maiden whom he befriends. His part, 
though a gallant knight, is to act as a foil to the steadfast- 
ness and fidelity of Amadis' character. But their advent- 
ures are practically the same, as are those of various other 
knights of royal birth, who gradually come on the stage and 
occupy it with their achievements. 

By increasing in this way the number of characters the 
author, whether Montalvo, or some reviser who preceded 
him, injures very much the unity of action in the novel, 
though he evidently supposes he is thereby increasing in- 
terest among his readers. To arrive at this last result he 
has recourse to another notion which had done such good 
service in the romances of the Round Table. This device is 
the use of magic and incantations, an agent which he employs 
sparingly at first, but later on, as the novelty of his inven- 
tions fades away, introduces into nearly every episode. So 
we see Amadis, in this second search for his brother, as 
he rides out guided by a treacherous dwarf, meeting with 
the enchanter, Arcalaus, whom he beats in a fair fight ; but 
he is afterward decoyed into a room, where he is overcome 
by the magician's arts and sinks into a deep sleep, which 
gives Arcalaus a chance to present himself at the court in the 
hero's armor and to sadden all the courtiers there, who 
believe then that Amadis is dead. Oriana is driven to des- 
pair. Meanwhile the perfect knight has been revived by 
the words of a book which a girl reads before him, and has 
left the castle. 

New adventures await him without. A funeral train 
meets him, where, borne on a litter, is the image of a king 
cut in marble. Afterward he comes upon Galaor, fails to 
recognize him, and begins to assail him in consequence of 
statements advanced by the artful niece of Arcalaus. A 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 143 

knight soon arrives, however, who stops the combat, and 
makes the brothers known to each other. Now they start 
together for the court, but Galaor turns aside to avenge the 
murder of a knight, and does not join Amadis again until 
each has undergone many perils and dangers. Finally they 
reach London and our hero comes again before his mistress. 
" When Amadis saw himself in the presence of his lady, 
his heart leaped from one side to the other, guiding his eyes 
so that they might see the thing in the world which he loved 
most ; and he approached her in great humility and she 
greeted him ; and putting out her hands from under the 
lace of her mantle she took his own, and pressed them as a 
semblance of embracing him and said to him : ' My friend, 
what pain and grief that traitor made me pass through who 
brought me the news of your death ! and believe me that 
woman was never in so great peril as I. Certainly, friend 
and lord, the danger was wholly reasonable, for never did 
any one have so great a loss as I in losing you ; for as I am 
loved more than all others, so my good fortune demanded 
that it should be by him who avails more than all! ' When 
Amadis heard himself praised by his lady he cast down his 
eyes to the ground, for he did not dare even to look at her, 
and she appeared so beautiful to him that his senses being 
troubled his words died away in his mouth ; so that he Jid 
not answer. Oriana, who kept her eyes fixed on him, noticed 
it straightway and said : ' Ah ! my friend, and lord ! how 
could I not love you more than any other thing ; for all who 
know you love you and value you ! and I, being the one 
whom you love and value, much more than for all others is 
it right for me to hold you dear ! ' Amadis, who had now 
calmed somewhat his trouble, said to her : ' Lady, I entreat 
you to grieve for the dolorous death which every day I suf- 
fer for your sake ; for that other death which it was said I 
had died, if it came to me, would be held as a great rest and 
consolation ; and if this sad heart of mine were not sus- 



144 AM AD IS OF GAUL. 

tained by the great desire which it has to serve you, and 
which with great force forcibly resists the many bitter tears 
which spring from it, I would already be undone and con- 
sumed by them, nor is this because it fails to recognize that 
its mortal desires are satisfied in great part by the fact that 
your remembrance deigns to be merely mindful of them ; 
but as for the greatness of its necessity it requires greater 
favor than that which it merits in being sustained and made 
good, and if this favor does not come quickly it will very 
soon go down to its cruel end.' " 

By the account of such interviews as these did Montalvo 
(whom we may safely assume improved very much on his 
original in such passages) endeavor to furnish to the nobility 
of Spain, not only the sentiments but the words and phrases 
for their attitude toward women, and their courtship of 
them. And had our author been able to renew his youth 
with each succeeding generation he would have found him- 
self more than rewarded for his labored sentences, and his 
high conception of the spirit of man toward woman, by see- 
ing his periods taken as a model for the conversation of 
lovers in subsequent fiction, and even in the daily walks of 
life. The Hotel de Rambouillet of the seventeenth century 
went back to Amadis de Gaula for much of its theory of 
social relations between the sexes, and handed down to our 
own day that reverence in manner and felicity in express- 
ing his desire to serve the fair ones, which we attribute to 
the " gentleman of the old school." The change of circum- 
stances has affected a phraseology fitted to the fifteenth 
century, but the courtly conversation which Montalvo de- 
sired to enjoin especially on his contemporaries has been, 
ever since his day, the ideal of gallantry and social 
refinement. 

With this meeting of Amadis and Oriana another solution 
of the plot is reached. Galaor has been found by his 
brother, and the troth of the lovers has been formally 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 145 

plighted in the presence of witnesses. So we may look for 
the speedy ending of the tale. Indeed, it is highly prob- 
able that the action of our supposed roman d'aventure ter- 
minated at this place. But not yet was the popular 
curiosity satisfied. The three books of Amadis, cited by 
Ferrus, had extended the love story of the romance to new 
marvels and adventures, and in order to bring these out it 
was necessary for the unknown author to hit on some ex- 
pedient to prolong his narrative. This expedient he found 
in deferring the marriage of the lovers, by raising up ob- 
stacles which should postpone the ceremony. Accordingly, 
Arcalaus, whose malignity was still on the alert, is made to 
hatch up a conspiracy against Lisuarte, king of England, 
by the terms of which he is to be abducted from London, 
and Oriana is to be given in marriage to Barsinan, lord of 
Sansuena, who would thereby succeed to the kingdom. All 
of which, the author explains, has a moral end in view, 
namely, the chastening of Lisuarte's pride. At first the 
traitors are successful, as they always are in ideal novels. 
Amadis and the nobles about the king are lured away on a 
supposed errand of mercy. Then Lisuarte is tricked into 
making an oath. Like Herod of old, he is obliged to give 
up Oriana in order to keep it, and finally is himself made a 
prisoner. The sadness and desolation which now brood 
over the once bright and joyous halls move the author to 
an elaborate dissertation on the vanity and perishableness 
of human greatness, after which homily he proceeds to 
gather his exiles together again. Amadis is the chief agent 
in this undertaking. He delivers in succession himself, 
Oriana, Lisuarte, and the queen, and sets the kingdom once 
more on its foundations. 

Now we might expect that true love could be at last 
requited. But no ! Amadis is soon forced to leave London, 
in order to perform a vow he had made during one of his 
adventures regarding an oppressed princess. On his way 



146 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

he is reminded of a broken sword which is necessary to the 
success of the enterprise, and sends his dwarf back to 
Oriana for the pieces he has left behind. The dwarf, igno- 
rant of the love between his master and Oriana, tells the 
latter about the expedition, and assures her that Amadis is 
the accepted knight of this foreign princess, Briolanja. 
Oriana, who had just given Amadis a ring as a pledge of 
her affection, now falls into extreme jealousy and despair, 
in the midst of which the narrator leaves her. 

The remainder of this first book of the novel is concerned 
with the career of Florestan, another son of Perion, born of 
a love intrigue in Germany, and who now meets Galaor, 
and fights with him until their common parentage is made 
known. Together they go in search of Amadis, and find 
him in the kingdom of Sobradisa, where the pious gratitude 
of the rescued princess, Briolanja, forms a fitting conclusion 
to this series of adventures. 

In imitation of the example set by the governor of Medina 
del Campo, let us also pause a moment in our course and 
draw a few morals from the analysis already given. The 
first book of Amadis offers, for our first moral, conclusive 
proof of the statement which was made about the nature of 
the romances of chivalry. They are stories of erotic adven- 
ture, like the Greek novels. They are, however, unlike the 
latter — saving the Nimrod fragment — aristocratic in tone, 
and have not only a personage of royal blood for a hero and 
a princess for a heroine, but also keep the adventures 
strictly within the limits of court life. The hero is a knight 
who places patriotism and loyalty before the satisfaction of 
his love, and whose love is respectful and unswerving. His 
love for his mistress is the mainspring of the story, for it 
was to prove himself worthy of her that he became a knight- 
errant. She is ever revered by him. In her presence he is 
always humble and a supplicant. She confers the favors 
which he begs. Yet in his desire to win her he never hesi- 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 147 

tates to obey the commands of his feudal sovereign. While 
in these particulars, which concern the spirit and sentiment 
of the work, as well as its unity of action, there is only a 
slight departure from the style of previous mediaeval fiction, 
in the material used, and in the setting of the story, there is 
an imitation of the Arthurian romances, which amounts 
almost to a copy of them. The latter have loaned their 
topography. Brittany and England, with Wales — soon to be 
confounded with France from the likeness of its name, 
Gaula — are the scene of most of the exploits. Scotland 
and Germany, to be sure, appear for variety's sake. The 
knights, like those of the Round Table, pass their time in 
avenging wrongs, mainly the wrongs of women. Allusions 
to King Arthur are frequent, and Tristan also claims an 
occasional reference. Urganda, the benevolent spirit, is 
another Lady of the Lake, though in the later books she 
fades into a vulgar enchantress. To this fairy a giant 
carries Galaor, as Lancelot was carried to Vivien. 

In minor details also there are many points of resemblance 
which have been already noted : the illegal parentage of the 
hero, rings as pledges and as means of recognition, dwarfs 
as attendants, both friendly and hostile, faithful squires and 
ladies in waiting, hermits who utter oracles, conquered 
knights and rescued maidens who bring news of the hero to 
court, and even down to the passive part which Lisuarte, 
the king, another Arthur, plays in the events which concern 
his throne. So strong is the influence of these prototypes 
on Amadis that up to this point no mention of Spain has 
been made, and no trace of Spanish customs, excepting the 
nightly interviews at the lady's window, has been found. 
On the contrary, the Spanish writer deliberately magnifies 
foreign courts and rulers, and enters into an especial eulogy 
on London, " which at that time was raised like an eagle 
above the mass of Christendom." There is, to be sure, 
other material entering into the composition of this first 



148 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

book of Amadis which might be attributed, though not 
positively, to the influence of the national heroic epic of 
France. We find occasionally in Amadis the account of 
combats, which single champions chosen for the purpose 
maintain in front of their respective armies, like the cele- 
brated fight of Roland and Oliver, and the details of many 
other duels of the Carolingian chivalry. In the brutality of 
these encounters, where horses are maimed and the arms 
and legs of the warriors are hewn away by piecemeal, there 
is a close resemblance to similar descriptions in the national 
epic. Also the enmity of the relatives of Arcalaus and 
Dardan toward the race of Amadis and Lisuarte reminds 
one strongly of the feud which the family of the arch-traitor 
Ganelon carried on with Roland and the other paladins of 
Charlemagne. The enchantments, too, in this first book 
are few and simple, like those in Maugis d Aigremont. One 
scene of magic, which the authors of Amadis could well have 
borrowed from this poem, is where Urganda casts a spell 
on a girl, who immediately seeks to throw herself into the 
water, under the impression that she is surrounded by burn- 
ing torches. So Arcalaus, the plan of whose castle is like 
the one where the Knight of the Lion found the captive 
maidens weaving, uses the cloud of Maugis in Renaud de 
Montauban as one of his stratagems, while sleep is another 
of his devices to get the better of his foes. 

The introduction of moral reflections and pious exhor- 
tations into the recital of such adventures is new, and may 
be safely set down to the credit of Spanish zeal. Also 
the great devotion with which the knights observe the cer- 
emonies of the Church, both in the usages of chivalry and 
in the private practice of their faith, probably comes from 
the long crusade of these southern Christians against the 
infidels, though it may have had its beginnings in the spas- 
modic piety of the knights who went in quest of the Holy 
Grail. Another novelty of Amadis has already been pointed 



AMADIS OF GAUL. H9 

out, and is the intention to place models of refined love- 
making and courtly conversation before the young nobles 
of Spain. The prominence which this feature assumes in 
the romance is so great, that we are justified in concluding 
that it was one of the leading motives in Montalvo's revis- 
ion of the story as he found it among the people. Plebeian 
writers would have hardly attempted a vein so obviously 
intended for an aristocratic public. And this is as good as 
saying that Montalvo looked on his services in the making 
over of the romance as the part of an instructor, to give 
dignity to what had before been purely amusing, and to 
raise the homely chapbook to the rank of polite literature. 

There is another element which appears but rarely in 
Amadis de Gaula, and yet forms the principal part of the 
novels of the present day. This is the realistic view of life. 
Naturally, in an ideal novel, there would be little room for 
matter-of-fact statements. The world of nature which 
envelops humanity is barely mentioned, in the vaguest way, 
by the writers of the romances of chivalry. In this respect 
we know they differed little from the general attitude of 
mediaeval literature toward natural scenery, which even in 
the spring poems of those remote ages wore a most conven- 
tional aspect. But we might be led by the old surroundings 
of our romance to expect, once in a while at least, some 
incidents of a different tone from the prevailing one of 
chivalry. It had lived among the people for so many gen- 
erations, and had been so long an amusement of their 
leisure hours, that it could scarcely have failed to gather up 
some instances of popular wit and satire. Yet if this were 
the case before Montalvo began his refining process, he was 
extremely successful in obliterating nearly every trace of 
it. His description of combats are realistic and detailed, 
but aside from them there are very few passages which offer 
evidence of an objective point of view. We have alluded 
to Oriana's seasickness which determined her stay in Scot- 



150 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

land. One or two other citations of the same nature can 
be made. Amadis once identifies a Dane by his speech, 
Oriana having used Danish somewhat in his early acquaint- 
ance with her. Also when our hero hurries along on his 
war-horse, distracted by the thought that he has been 
robbed of his mistress, he meets with a commonplace mis- 
hap : "And Amadis, who did not notice where he was 
going, missed, in his great sorrow and care, the ford of a 
brook, and when he thought he could leap over the brook, 
his horse, which was tired out, could not do it, but fell back 
into the mud." 

There is one instance of a coarse joke in this first book 
of Amadis, a joke, to be sure, which the stern Dante had 
deigned to make in his Inferno. It is where the dwarf who 
has been maltreated by Arcalaus complains of the latter's 
brutality, and says to Amadis : " ' I cannot bear to stand 
on the leg by which he hung me up, and my nostrils are so 
filled with the fumes of the brimstone he placed under me 
that since then I have done nothing but sneeze, and even a 
worse thing than that.' Great was the laughter of Amadis 
and Bramdoibas, and also of the ladies and maidens, at what 
he said." But where these few examples are all which can be 
gleaned from a volume of some three hundred ordinary 
pages we are not warranted in asserting that practical every- 
day affairs entered into this rehabilitated chapbook of old 
Spain. Nor does the author attempt any portraitures of 
persons, on which the French novelists of the seventeenth 
century, who drew so much of their inspiration from Amadis 
of Gaul, prided themselves. He does, indeed, consent to 
make an attempt at a description of the two brothers, but 
remains lastingly satisfied with this effort : li The brothers 
looked so much alike that it was hard to tell them apart, 
excepting that Don Galaor was somewhat fairer, and that 
Amadis had curly auburn hair and somewhat more color in 
the face, and was larger of limb." 



AM AD IS OF GAUL. 15 1 

We have lingered over the first book of Amadis because 
in it the spirit of the romances of chivalry is made manifest, 
as well as their characteristic features of style and composi- 
tion. With the beginning of the second book comes in a 
long digression from the career of the Western heroes, and 
we are told how the prince Apolidon of Constantinople, 
and heir to its throne, had handed over his inheritance to 
his younger brother, and had sailed away with his wife and 
books to Firm Island, of indefinite location. He speedily 
killed the giant who was then ruling over the island, and 
succeeded to the lordship. For many years he governed 
wisely his conquest and, on being compelled to receive 
again his ancestral kingdom, he erected on Firm Island, at 
the request of his wife, Grimanesa, an enchanted palace. 
By the nature of the spell which he threw over this build- 
ing, none but true lovers might ever penetrate into its 
recesses. Its outer portal was guarded by images which 
repelled all those who did not surpass Apolidon in valor, or 
Grimanesa in beauty. When the lovers who could entirely 
break this spell should come, the island was to pass into 
their possession. Great is the satisfaction of the novelist 
as he details the splendor of this creation, for which, to be 
sure, he had plenty of models in many of the more notable 
epic poems of France. 

To this island comes Amadis, with his brothers, on their 
return to London from Briolanja's kingdom. All the 
knights endeavor to break the masculine part of the spell, 
but our hero alone succeeds, and becomes lord of the estate. 
In the midst of his triumph, however, arrives a messenger, 
bringing a letter from Oriana, in which she gives vent to 
her jealousy over his supposed intrigue with Briolanja, and 
banishes him, on account of his faithlessness, from her 
presence forever. The effect of such a dismissal on a true 
and perfect knight is seen beforehand. After a fruitful 
dream, Amadis makes his will, founds a monastery, dis- 



152 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

tributes his personal effects, abdicates his throne, and goes 
away alone. He soon finds the hermit who is ever at hand 
to comfort distracted lovers, and turns hermit himself, 
under the descriptive name of Beltenebros. But the con- 
soling hermit is a shrewd old fellow who soon sees through 
our hero, and reproaches him for the occasion of this sud- 
den attack of piety, which he rightly attributes, not to 
religion, but to unsuccessful love. Amadis' career as an- 
chorite is not long. The messenger returns to Oriana with 
the true version of the affair which had caused her anger. 
A little later her compassion is aroused by the arrival of 
Amadis' armor. For a while she believes him to be dead, 
but her confidant suspects that in the guise of Beltenebros, 
whose praises are now sung at the court, the real knight is 
concealed, and Oriana dispatches another letter to him, 
begging him to return. The arrival of his pardon brings 
Amadis' hermit life to an abrupt ending, and determines his 
immediate departure for London. 

This episode of Amadis' exile from despairing love is one 
of the most successful parts of the romance, and a decided 
improvement on the old-fashioned way in the Arthurian 
legends, where Tristan, I wain, and similarly rejected suitors 
spend the time of their disgrace in violent acts of insanity. 
The notion of the Spanish author is more natural, more 
refined, and particularly more romantic, in the modern 
sense of the word. For these reasons " le Beau tenebreux, " 
as the French translated Beltenebros ', became the type and 
standard for all unfortunate suitors. Melancholy, calm, and 
conscious of its own dignity, it replaced in the higher 
circles of society the traditional ravings and the abuse of 
the wooed one. It would not, however, be fair to assign to 
the romances of chivalry the exclusive right to this concep- 
tion, for in the pastoral novels of the sixteenth century the 
same inevitable cause, of true love, brings about the same sit- 
uation on the part of the lover. But the romances of chiv- 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 153 

airy possess, at all events, the advantage of priority in date 
over their later rivals, and if they did not bequeath to the 
pastoral tales their idea of amorous melancholy and erotic,< 
despair, they did at least furnish romantic literature, in the 
days of the Renaissance, with a model for blighted beings, 
and created a sympathetic spirit which lasted the youth of 
France for no less than three centuries. 

While Amadis is returning to the court, Oriana withdraws 
to the castle of Miraflores, to repent at leisure of her cruelty 
toward him. His absence had also given the enemies of 
Lisuarte a chance to rally. A knight had penetrated even 
to the king's palace, bearing defiance from Arcalaus and 
the giants. Amadis, having obtained new armor, fights his 
way through these adversaries to his mistress ; a'nd at this 
point the author introduces a trial of true love, such as the 
East offered so plentifully to the West in the Middle Ages. 
An old man arrives at the court, bringing with him a sword, 
in a green scabbard of transparent bone. Through this 
scabbard was seen the blade of the sword, half bright, like 
other blades, half red, like fire. In the jasper casket, which 
contained the sword and sheath, was also a wreath of 
flowers, of which one half was dry and withered, the other 
half freshly blooming. The sword could be drawn forth 
only by the most faithful lover, the flowers revived only *by 
the most constant mistress. It is not necessary to add that 
Amadis and Oriana, in disguise, succeeded in the test, where 
all others failed. 

But the challenge of the giants leads to a general war. 
Amadis, under the name of Beltenebros, decides a pitched 
battle in Lisuarte's favor against the hostile king of Ireland. 
The Irish king and Galaor were wounded in this fight, 
which the author describes at length, and were carried 
away by maidens in a boat to a castle by the sea, where 
Urganda healed them. This fairy, who is now rapidly 
evolving into an enchantress, soon after approaches the court 



154 AMAD1S OF GAUL. 

in a galley surrounded by flames, hung with garlands, and 
heralded by the sweetest music. When the boat stops she 
lands with her maidens, seeks out Oriana, casts a spell over 
the princess' attendants, and gives voice to a prophecy. 
Now there would seem to be no hindrance to the legal 
union of the lovers. An obstacle, however, is soon found in 
the awakening jealousy of the king on account of Amadis' 
fame, and in the growth of this jealousy, until Amadis is 
forced by it in true loyalty to submit to his sovereign and to 
retire with his friends to Firm Island. After their departure 
Lisuarte's evil mood leads him to play the tyrant. 

With this new episode, which contains the best psycholog- 
ical work of the romance, in the description of the king's 
jealousy and alarm, and its effect on his character and sub- 
sequent acts, the second book of Amadis de Gaula comes to 
an end. It is, as it stands in Montalvo's revision, much less 
interesting than the first book. It would seem as if Mon- 
talvo had felt, in rewriting it, less trammeled by the author- 
ity of tradition, and had gone on to develop in the romance 
his own views of what the story should be. In the first 
book the variety of incidents, and the rapidity with which 
they succeed one another, would indicate quite conclusively 
a close adherence to the original material. But in the 
second the episodes are less in number, are more spun out, 
and yet, in compensation, they are more ornate and inspir- 
ing from a literary point of view. The element of humor 
in them is largely increased, conversations are multiplied, 
and by their dialogue form more life is given to the nar- 
rative, while the more extended space occupied by descrip- 
tions of magic may be supposed to have aroused greater 
interest in the childish minds of the fifteenth century. The 
invention of Firm Island, its buildings, and their enchant- 
ments, was very likely in the traditional three books, but 
beyond a doubt the older description offered to our am- 
bitious reviser an excellent chance to show the power of his 



« 



A MAD IS OF GAUL. 155 

pen. The tests of chastity on Firm Island resemble like 
tests in previous literature, and remind one of the device 
related in the Greek novel of Achilles Tatius. But the 
trials of the sword and flowers at court are less elaborately 
described, and may have been inserted by Montalvo him- 
self, either through an effort of his own brain, or by appro- 
priating stories which were circulating among the people. 
So that the general effect of the«second book on the reader 
leads to the opinion that Montalvo has quite freed himself 
from the restraints placed upon him by the old chapbook, 
and is now molding the story to suit his own views of style 
and plan. 

Yet we must not overlook the fact that this part of the 
revised Amadis is closely related to certain kinds of me- 
diaeval literature, even though it breaks somewhat with the 
legends of the Breton cycle. Bridge fights are numerous. 
Giants and giantesses gain a more definite character, and 
this increased definiteness makes it plain that they are not 
the ogres and cannibals of folk-tales, but are the enemies of 
the faith of the Carolingian poems, pagans, and even devils. 
Later, in the third book, we shall see Amadis sparing the 
life of the giant Madraque in return for the latter's con- 
version to Christianity, just as the paladins of Charlemagne 
were wont to do with Fierabras and his ilk. In the same 
way, Sir Borneo's horse, like the famous Bayard in Renaud 
de Montauban, aids his owner by attacking the enemy's 
charger while Bruneo is assailing its rider. If Montalvo 
had wished to introduce new material into the novel, the 
heroic epic of the Middle Ages, now renewing its popularity 
in a prose form, was able to furnish him with an abundant 
supply ready to hand. 

The impression, then, which one receives from the second 
book of Amadis de Gaula is that the last reviser of the story, 
and the only one known to fame, took what liberty he pleased 
with the romance, as handed down to him by his predeces- 



i$6 AMADlS OF GAUL. 

sors, and diluted the traditional events in his own flow of 
descriptions and conversations. Such a treatment of the 
subject-matter was only the more accentuated in the books 
following. In the third book, for instance, conversation 
pure and simple occupies a still larger space than in the 
second, and the style seems to be entirely free of any limita- 
tions which the sentences of the original might have im- 
posed upon it. From all that may be gathered from the 
incidents and surroundings related in this book, we cannot 
assert with any confidence at all that the plot of the original 
Amadis has contributed any situations to its action. Indeed 
the general tone of the third book would point to the Turk- 
ish conquest of Constantinople as the source of its exploits, 
and would therefore place its composition in the time of 
Montalvo himself. And there is no doubt but that he fur- 
nished a good share of the events, if not indeed all of them. 
The birth of Esplandian for instance is related early in the 
book, and, according to Montalvo himself, this child was 
begotten in order to give an excuse for a sequel to which 
Montalvo should have the sole right of proprietorship. 
Curiously enough we find here the first mention of Spain, 
whose king is seen at last, fighting in England with his 
knights. 

The part of Amadis throughout almost the whole of this 
book is the role of a disguised personage, a notion after- 
wards fostered by the pastoral novels, and becoming, from 
this time down to the eighteenth century, such a favorite de- 
vice in fiction. From his success in undergoing the test of 
chastity already narrated, Amadis assumed the name of the 
Knight of the Green Sword, and under that title spread 
abroad his fame from London to Constantinople. Lisuarte 
was still hostile to him. Yet in his absence Oriana gave birth 
to a son, whose body was found to be marked with Latin and 
Greek characters. Like his father and many other heroes 
of the past, this child was also exposed to his fate and was 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 157 

carried off by a lioness. Bat a hermit interferes, rescues the 
infant, and forces the beast to suckle it. Besides, the hermit 
knows Latin, and interprets the letters of that language 
which were stamped on the child's body. They spell out 
the name Esplandian, with which the boy is then christened. 
Meanwhile Lisuarte triumphs, though in an unjust cause, 
over the friends of Amadis. His success, however, is of 
short duration, for the giants, who have always feared our 
hero, now seize their opportunity and invade England. But 
Amadis and Perion come to the king's aid, in disguise, and 
beat back the invaders in a pitched battle, which is well de- 
scribed by our author. The new allies are tricked in their 
turn and captured by Arcalaus, but soon make good their 
escape. Now Amadis, still in disgrace with Lisuarte, turns 
his back on England and travels toward the East. He 
visits Germany and Bohemia — where he kills in defense of 
that country the champion of the Roman emperor — and 
Roumania, all the while bewailing his exile from his mistress, 
but prudently putting his time to good use by acquiring the 
different languages of the lands through which he passes. 
Finally sailing along the islands of Greece, with the wise 
physician, Helisabad, he is wrecked on Devil's Island, and 
there performs the great feat of slaying the monster which 
inhabits it. Thence he proceeds to Constantinople, whither 
his fame as Knight of the Green Sword had already pre r 
ceded him. The thought of Oriana makes him supremely 
miserable, but does not prevent him from winning the ad- 
miration of all Byzantium by his manners and his courtly 
conversation. At last, after six years of unwearying melan- 
choly, he sets out for London, as escort of the Roumanian 
princess Grasinda, whom he had aided when he was in her 
country. 

During the separation of the lovers Esplandian has in- 
creased in stature, has attracted Lisuarte's attention, as the 
king was one day hunting in the forests, and has been taken 



I5 8 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

to the court at London, together with his lioness and hermit. 
Urganda has written a letter to Lisuarte recommending 
Esplandian, and Oriana has recognized her son, and con- 
fessed her fault to the hermit. But new troubles arise. 
Lisuarte is ignorant of the boy's parentage, and when the 
Roman emperor, El Patin, asks for Oriana in marriage, the 
king gives his consent, though in so doing he runs counter 
to the advice of all his counselors. But the Knight of the 
Green Sword arrives in the nick of time, summons the 
boastful Romans to a mortal combat, overthrows them, yet 
spares their lives at the intercession of the child Esplandian, 
who has dared to venture within the lists. Lisuarte, how- 
ever, still insists on the marriage, and the reluctant Oriana 
is given up to the Romans, and is forced to embark for 
Rome with them. Amadis thinks the time for a decisive 
deed has now come. He hurries to Firm Island, assembles 
there his troops, and in a studied oration — in which Mon- 
talvo clearly seeks to rival the speeches delivered by the his- 
torians of antiquity — he exhorts his followers to pursue the 
Romans and destroy their fleet. The approval of the idea 
by Amadis' army gives the author a chance to describe a 
naval engagement, in which the Romans are worsted, and 
Oriana is taken to Firm Island by her own true knight. 

There are certain features in this third book of Amadis 
which, though they do not probably have their origin in 
the popular story, were, without much doubt, derived from 
mediaeval literature, and certainly suggested the inventions 
of subsequent fiction. For whatever was received into 
Amadis de Gaida was clothed with undisputed authority by 
the public, and was looked upon with an almost religious 
veneration by later novelists of the ideal-romantic school. 
We have spoken of the transfer of the action to Constanti- 
nople and the East (a shifting of scenery which was never 
afterward neglected in heroic fiction), and of the disguise 
under which Amadis performed so many of his exploits — a 



AMADIS OF GAUL. 159 

notion that the Breton poems had often used, and which the 
novels of the French school carried to an extreme in the 
seventeenth century. Of course the latter were also subject 
to the influence of the pastoral stories, which were full of 
such episodes as the one of Beltenebros. As for the birth- 
marks of Esplandian, they may look back to the birthmarks 
of the romans d'aventurc, though the idea of anything so 
definite as letters of the alphabet may have been original 
with Montalvo. But they and the rearing of the young 
prince (which reminds us of the infancy of Romulus and 
Remus) became standard devices with later authors. One 
surprising feature in the book is the animus showed every- 
where against Rome. This enmity can in no way be traced 
to mediaeval sources, in thought or in literature, for all the 
people of the Middle Ages revered the name of Rome ; and 
the Latin races in particular looked on themselves as the 
rightful inheritors of her scepter. There seems to be, 
then, no other explanation for this hostility to the imperial 
city in Amadis than that which is offered by the fact that Italy, 
which represented more exactly the territory of ancient 
Rome, had never been a fruitful soil for the institutions of 
feudalism, and that her plebeian wars had excited only the 
aversion of Western chivalry. 

In this book the Spanish idea of loyalty to the monarch, 
which is not found, to such a degree at least, anywhere 
in mediaeval literature, is carried out to its logical extreme. 
Amadis, though wronged by Lisuarte and treated by him 
with the greatest ingratitude, never lifts his hand against the 
king, nor tolerates the slightest hint of resistance to him. 
He comes to the assistance of Oriana, whose troubles are 
all brought upon her by the tyrannical spirit of her father, 
only when she has ceased to be his subject by having been 
delivered over to the ruler of the Romans. In this part of 
the novel, too, the didactic bent increases in prominence, 
and moral reflections on the result of evil-doing, or exhor- 



160 AMADIS OF GAUL. 

tations to the practice of Christian virtues, most plentifully 
abound. 

If the third book contains little of the original plot of 
Amadis de Gaida, the fourth and last is perhaps entirely a 
new creation of Montalvo. This fact seems patent when 
we find everywhere the adaptations of old exploits and a 
constant repetition of the regular commonplaces. Yet 
though the substance of this part is but a working-over of 
the traditional elements, the construction of the fourth book 
is superior to the design of its predecessors, and reveals a 
higher art of composition. The improvement is particularly 
apparent in the dermiteness of the parts which the differ- 
ent characters are now called upon to act. The nar- 
rative describes again, and at length, the buildings on Firm 
Island, while the life there, at Amadis' court, is placed 
before us in greater detail than had before been attempted. 
Conversations between knights and ladies, harangues of the 
leaders to the assembled councils, and frequent letters to 
and from allies, fill up many chapters. For the fourth book 
is the longest of them all, containing 130 pages out of the 
400 which make up the romance. The events described 
include the attack of Lisuarte, aided by the Romans, on 
Firm Island, and a battle lasting two days, after which 
Amadis recalls his troops to spare the king a defeat. This 
act prepared the way for the peace which is brought about by 
Esplandian's hermit, who comes to Firm Island and discloses 
the parentage of the child. But a new trouble arises for 
Lisuarte. During his absence Arcalaus, who has bided his 
time for revenge, has gathered his relatives and friends. 
He attacks the king on his return home and defeats him. 
Amadis speedily arrives, however, and in turn conquers the 
common enemy. At last, after all these achievements, the 
author can find no occasion for further deferring the lawful 
union of the lovers. He gathers together at Firm Island 
their friends and relatives, and there is celebrated the mar- 



A MA BIS OF GAUL. 161 

riage, which was destined to put an end to the last enchant- 
ment of Apolidon's palace. Now our hero can enjoy his 
well-earned repose. But not the author, for he has still 
another book to write, in order to relate the deeds of Es- 
plandian, whom Amadis had despatched to Constantinople 
to redeem a promise, confiding to him the ring which the 
imperial princess had formerly given to the Knight of the 
Green Sword. Amadis himself remains at Firm Island, 
while his allies withdraw to their homes, after undergoing a 
final harangue from their leader, the finishing touch of 
Amadis de Gaula. 

It would be a matter of considerable literary importance, 
and also extremely gratifying to our curiosity, could we 
trace, step by step, the growth of this union of a love tale 
and warlike adventures into the first of modern novels. But 
conjecture is our only resource. From all the pages upon 
which Montalvo has based his fame with posterity, we may 
indeed draw our own conclusions regarding the story which 
was the starting-point. A comparison of the leading features 
of Amadis with various French poems of the Middle Ages 
might show that the original plot of the romance of chivalry 
consisted of an early affection between hero and heroine, of 
a few adventures undergone by the hero to win his spurs, 
of the awakening of the heroine's jealousy through some 
unusual exploit performed by her knight to the profit of 
another woman, her consequent coldness and his madness 
or self-exile, and of their reconciliation when she became 
aware of her mistake, and when he had rendered her or her 
parents some service of which they stood in great need, such 
as a deliverance from their enemies. To expand this simple 
story to its present dimensions required long effort on the 
part of writers, and a popular interest in it lasting through 
many generations. 

Yet all these advantages would not have availed to raise 
Amadis of Gaul above the level of many other mediaeval 



162 AMADIS OF GAUL, 

romances of the kind, had not the art of style and composi- 
tion, which was revealed to the modern world by the dis- 
covery of the literature of antiquity, come to its aid and 
given to it a standing in cultivated society. For it is the 
expansion of the primitive bare narrative of mere events, 
erotic or warlike, by the introduction of descriptions, con- 
versations, moral injunctions, and chivalrous instructions, 
which has made of the 7-oman d'aventure and the chapbook 
of the Spanish populace the pioneer novel of our latter-day 
civilization. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SEQUELS TO AMADIS OF GAUL. THE PALMERINS, ETC. 

Montalvo was not content with spinning out his render- 
ing of the old romance to the extent of nine hundred or 
more octavo pages. He must needs add a sequel entirely 
of his own make, which is good for four hundred pages 
more, which sequel called for other sequels by other ambi- 
tious scribes, until folio on folio was piled up in the ducal 
libraries of Spain and France, whose combined leaves would 
discourage enumeration. And besides Amadis and his race, 
which had some legendary reason for existence, in the cele- 
brity of its founder, there was a rival family made up out of 
whole cloth, the Palmerins of several generations, and many 
individual heroes whose dynasties were not perpetuated in 
literature. A decade of years would not be too great a 
length of time in which to become acquainted with the 
biographies of all of them, nor the concentrated patience of 
seven generations excessive for the task. A few analyses 
of the best are warranted to prove this point most satis- 
factorily. 

We left Montalvo as he was about to launch his own inde- 
pendent romance of chivalry. His notion of giving an heir 
to Amadis, who should equal or improve on the deeds of 
his father, was not a new one in mediaeval literature. One 
of the cycles of French epic poems, the one which celebrates 
the fame of William of Orange and his house (the ancestors 
of the family living at Orange, on the Rhone, in the ninth 
and tenth centuries, are here meant) had been based on the 
same idea of hereditary valor and merit. To connect his 

163 



164 SEQUELS TO AM AD IS OF GAUL. 

sequel with his revision, Montalvo turns to good account 
one of the principal agents in the action of the latter, 
Urganda. This lady, now in the last stage of evolution from 
a fairy of the Celts to an enchantress of the East, comes to 
Firm Island in a dragon ship which belches forth fire and 
smoke of midnight blackness, takes on board Esplandian, 
dressed in full armor and wearing the ring of the Byzantine 
princess, and carries him away to meet adventures. 

These take place mainly in the Orient, and Montalvo, in 
keeping with the good old custom of the writers of fiction, 
claims that he merely translated them from a Greek novel of 
the wise Helisabad, the friend of Amadis in the East. He 
thereby accounts for the title of his book, Las Sergas de 
Espla?idian — the word sergas as he uses it meaning "deeds." 
The transference of the action to Constantinople and its 
dependencies may have been made because Montalvo as- 
sumed, and very rightly, that Amadis had worn all novelty 
out of the West. At the same time, the Turkish onslaught 
on the Eastern Empire and its capital gave a slight histori- 
cal basis for his story, and no doubt added to its interest 
among the conquerors of Granada. For the crusading 
spirit of the book appears in the arrival of Urganda's ship 
at Enchantress Hill, and the commission which Esplandian 
there receives to fight the enemies of the faith. Accord- 
ingly he first travels beyond the limits of Byzantine rule to 
Persia, where he is known as the Black Knight, from the 
color of his armor. On the way, however, he has lost his 
faithful squire Sargil, as Amadis had before him lost Gan- 
dalin. But still he fights, a stranger, and passes through the 
usual run of experiences, in which more enchantments are 
used than heretofore. The overthrowing of giants goes on 
prosperously, and the freeing of captives knows no cessation. 
Among the male prisoners set at liberty by this valiant war- 
rior are the old king Lisuarte, who has got himself into a 
new entanglement^ and the wise Helisabad. The enemies 



SEQUELS TO AMADIS OF GAUL. 165 

of Esplandian are represented as relatives of Arcalaus, and 
among his friends are found various hermits who attend on 
his repose. Sons of Galaor and of other heroes of renown 
in Amadis de Gaula also occupy the scene, while Urganda 
stands ever ready with magic and armor to help on the 
rightful cause. 

A further connection with the first four books of Amadis 
is established by embarking the young knight, his grand- 
father, and the sage on Urganda's ship of the Great Serpent, 
which then moves away of its own accord and lands them 
all at Amadis' court on Firm Island. Esplandian later on 
fights with his father, not knowing him. While these family 
affairs are being regulated, the maiden Carmela, who has 
gone to Constantinople on a love errand, and a political 
one as well, delivers to the princess on the part of Esplan- 
dian her ring, and also induces the emperor to send an 
army against Persia. To Esplandian, who is now fighting 
at Forbidden Mountain in the Turkish peninsula, Amadis 
sends a strong force of English — he having succeeded to 
the crown on the abdication of Lisuarte, who had retired 
to a monastery — an example to Charles V. Leonorina the 
princess sends back a harsh message to Esplandian, but 
finally relents, and he obtains his first interview with her by 
being carried into her chamber hidden in a chest. For 
some time now the author descants on the mutual affection 
and emotion of the lovers, but soon returns to the wars. 
The great historical catastrophe is drawing near. All the 
pagans are assembled under the lead of the Sultan Armato 
to besiege Constantinople. All the western Christians are 
summoned to its defense. To the magic of Urganda is 
opposed the art of Melia on the infidel side. A new inven- 
tion is the appearance among the assailants of Calafia, the 
Amazon queen of the island of California (most marvel- 
ously described), who devastates the ranks of the faithful by 
means of her fifty griffins. Assault and repulse follow 



1 66 SEQUELS TO AMADIS OF GAUL. 

sorties and pitched battles, but a large part of the war is 
carried on by means of single combats, in which individual 
knights win resounding fame. At last the western allies, 
having rendezvoused at Firm Island, proceed to the Greek 
capital. There Amadis and Esplandian overcome in a two- 
fold duel Calafia and the Sultan Radiaro, while the Chris- 
tian army defeats the pagan in a general engagement. But 
in the struggle both Perion and Lisuarte fall. 

As a reward for his assistance the Greek emperor marries 
his daughter to Esplandian. Through this ceremony the 
Greek characters on the knight's breast become legible, and 
spell Leonorina. The emperor then kindly abdicates in 
favor of his son-in-law, the captive sultan is exchanged for 
Urganda, who had fallen into the hands of the enemy, the 
serpent ship disappears, and its mistress, who foresees that 
without her intervention the Christian heroes must pay the 
common debt of nature, enchants them all, knights and 
ladies, in Firm Island. Into the earth they descend, 
never to come forth again until at some future day, like the 
blameless king, Arthur, they shall be brought to life by the 
sword of Lisuarte, son of Esplandian. 

We have already called attention to the principal features 
of Las Sergas de Esplandian, and the short analysis given 
of that book only emphasizes what has been said regarding 
its inferiority to the preceding parts of Amadis. One 
original idea, for the romances of chivalry at least, is the 
love by hearsay, which grew up between the hero and the 
Byzantine princess, but the larger part of new material is 
due to the desire to avoid repetition of the events related 
in the former books of the series. Montalvo succeeds in 
this endeavor, yet in so doing becomes both extravagant 
and unreal. For his imagination had not sufficient force to 
compensate for the exhaustion of the traditional episodes 
from which he at first drew, and this defect renders his 
descriptions of the exploits in the fifth book wearisome, and 



- 



SEQUELS TO AMADIS OF GAUL. 167 

the reasons for the meetings of the knights with one another 
too artificial to be probable. The constant introduction of 
the old hero, Amadis, interferes with the unity of action 
desirable, and worst of all the love story is labored and 
stale. The style has also deteriorated, for which we may 
perhaps hold Montalvo's advancing years responsible. It is 
self-constrained, thin in quality, conscious of effort ; even 
the moralizings do not possess the simple and honest piety 
of the teachings of Amadis. We cannot then blame the 
good curate of Don Quixote for his judgment on Las Sergas, 
since in fact the excellences of the " father" are not indeed 
handed down to the " son." Such pronounced differences 
in fancy and composition would lead us to suppose a consid- 
erable gap between the date of the fourth book and the time 
of the fifth, and would go to show that Montalvo had waited 
too long in carrying out his long-cherished plan of furnish- 
ing a sequel to the original romance. 

But the dryness and tediousness of Las Sergas were not 
noticed in the novelty and freshness of the whole work, 
which Montalvo gave in one volume to the public, and the 
great favor with which the old traditions of the people were 
received by the higher classes of society showed that the 
age of Ferdinand and Isabella overlooked or forgave all 
deficiencies in a piece of literature which reflected so well 
the spirit of the times. 

So enduring was the popularity of Montalvo's story that 
ambitious writers of the following generation thought they 
might gain renown by attaching themselves to its fortunes. 
A sixth book of Amadis appeared early in the sixteenth 
century, and under the title of Don Florisando related the 
career of Florestan, the half-brother of Amadis and Galaor. 
Lisuarte the Younger had his turn (for which Montalvo 
had prepared the way) in the seventh and eighth books, 
called after him Lisuarte de Grecia. With him was asso- 
ciated Perion, Esplandian's younger brother, while the 



1 63 SEQUELS TO AMADIS OF GAUL. 

object of their united love is the princess Onoloria, of 
Trebizond, a place that enjoyed considerable fame in the 
latter part of the Middle Ages. Combats, imprisonments, 
magic, and rescues are narrated in close imitation of the 
original Amadis. One apparent novelty, however, is Lis- 
uarte's escape from prison, disguised in female attire. It 
is he who also finds the enchanted sword and frees the 
sleepers on Firm Island ; but their deliverance of Constanti- 
nople is retarded by the disappearance of Lisuarte, who 
retires to exile after the arrival of a harsh message from 
Onoloria. In this story Spain appeared as a country for the 
first time, but even then only in passing. 

So sequel follows sequel, with little variation of exploits 
or method. The son of Lisuarte and Onoloria, Amadis of 
Greece, comes to the aid of his father in the ninth book, and 
when he, in turn, is enchanted in a tower, he is delivered by 
his son, Florisel of Niquea, the hero of the tenth book. A 
new idea, too, is the introduction of the Russians here, who 
are, to be sure, placed in no highly complimentary situations. 
But a more important step is the admission, in this book, of 
fictitious material, foreign to the substance out of which 
were formed the romances of chivalry. 

This departure from tradition is in the shape of a pastoral 
episode. Darinel, a shepherd, has fallen in love with Sylvia, 
a supposed shepherdess, but who, in reality, is the daughter 
of Lisuarte and Onoloria in disguise. The suit of Darinel 
she rejects with aristocratic disdain, and prince Florisel, 
who has assumed the shepherd's dress in order to assail her 
affections with a greater chance of success, fares no better. 
But her fate comes at last, and the haughty maiden 
yields to the renown of Anastarax, Florisel's brother, who 
had been locked up in the enchantment of a flaming 
tower. When the magic arts which overcame him had 
been broken, the true birth of Sylvia was made known to 
a curious world. The import of this story in Florisel de 



SEQUELS TO AMADIS OF GAUL. 1 69 

Niquea does not seem to have been appreciated by writers 
on literary history. The verdict which the curate pro- 
nounces upon it, in his review of Don Quixote's library, has 
been accepted as final by all later authorities, and is surely 
correct from the aesthetic standpoint. Bat from the stand- 
point of the historical development of fiction, this account 
of Sylvia's caprice is deserving of a somewhat better fate 
than cremation in the honest parson's bonfire. For it 
shows very conclusively, that already by the beginning of 
the fourth decade of the sixteenth century pastoral stories 
had become popular in Spain, and the notion of princely 
characters in pastoral disguise had been definitely estab- 
lished in fiction. Otherwise we may be very sure that the 
author of this tenth book, a certain Feliciano da Silva, 
would not have allowed himself to bring into his narrative 
an element which, in its essence, was so utterly at variance 
with his main subject. This episode is a reliable witness to 
the prevalence of pastoral tales in Spain, and is itself earlier 
in date than any other version of them. Such evidence 
will be important when we come to consider the historical 
growth of the pastoral novel in the Spanish peninsula. 

The insertion of this pastoral episode also proves another 
point, more germane to our present subject, which is that 
the romances of chivalry had worn out their own common- 
places, and were being forced to draw on other sources of 
story-telling to retain their hold on the reading public. Such 
a necessity foreboded their decline, and accordingly we are 
not surprised to find, after two more books on the exploits 
of Florisel's brothers and the beauty of his daughter, Diana, 
that the long series of the sequels to Amadis comes to an 
end. In two generations the great admiration for the days 
of chivalry had produced no less than twelve large volumes, 
filled with events bearing so great a resemblance to one 
another as to have proved — from all that our modern tastes 
can determine — decidedly monotonous even to the most 



17° SEQUELS TO AMADIS OF GAUL. 

credulous audience. But the spirit which animated the 
fountain head of them all, the ideal of knighthood and of 
loyalty to the monarch and to the True Faith, sustained these 
long compilations in popular favor down to the rule of 
Philip II. By the middle of the sixteenth century further 
expansions of the theme ceased on Spanish soil. But it 
awoke elsewhere to new life and underwent additional 
development, which extended its increased fame to the 
limits of European civilization. This second life of the 
Amadis family resulted from transplanting it to France. 

When Francis I., after the battle of Pavia, in 1525, 
found himself an unwilling guest at the court of Spain, he 
whiled away the tedious hours of his captivity by allowing 
himself to be diverted with the narratives of Spanish fiction. 
In this way the various books of Amadis de Gaula were 
brought to his royal attention, as the story which at that 
time was engrossing, above all others, the minds of his hosts. 
Whether it was the notions of loyalty and honor extolled 
by the novel which won the king's favor, or, as seems more 
probable, the story appealed to him as essentially French in 
origin and thus properly belonging to French literature, the 
fortunes of Amadis and his descendants became so firmly 
impressed on the mind of the monarch, that soon after his 
return to France he commissioned one of his courtiers, 
Nicolas de Herberay des Essarts, to reproduce them in a 
translation. Des Essarts soon set himself at his task, and 
between the years 1540 and 1548 he did into French and 
published the five books written by Montalvo, together with 
Lisuarte de Grecia and A?nadis de Grecia — omitting Don 
Florisa?ido — in all eight books of the Spanish original. 

Des Essarts does not worry over the exact meaning of 
the original text, but adapts it in a free and easy manner to 
the taste of its new readers, and brings it into sympathy 
with the customs of the time and surroundings, as his friends 
had advised him to do. Consequently the tone of the whole 



SEQUELS TO AMAD1S OF GAUL. 17* 

history is changed, under his desire to be in keeping with 
the wishes of his public. The deeply devout attitude of 
Amadis de Gau/a, its religious and didactic tendency, is 
greatly weakened in Amadis de Gau/e, while the erotic ele- 
ment, of the Galaor stripe, is fortified in proportion. By 
these changes it became more acceptable to the less severe 
temper of the French, and won abroad a popularity which 
equaled its old renown at home. Des Essarts himself tes- 
tifies to the success of Amadis in its new environment, won 
"in spite of 0?'lando Furioso," so like it in matter but unlike 
in spirit. The favor obtained by Des Essarts' version 
tempted other writers of France to try their fortunes in the 
same undertaking. Further translations from the Spanish 
followed these first eight books, and when the original 
source had run dry, additional sequels, due to French 
invention, were placed on the market. The true and perfect 
knight of mediaeval chivalry renewed his youth in the full 
light of the Renaissance. His fame filled volume after vol- 
ume, until by 1625 no less than twenty-five books testified 
to the fervor of his welcome to the land which was supposed 
to have given him birth, and where at all events the mate- 
rial for his biography had been slowly collected before it was 
set in order by the romancers of the South. The influence 
of this new series of Amadis on the French heroic-gallant 
novel of the seventeenth century need not be recalled 
again. 

Elsewhere in western Europe the Spanish romance of 
chivalry aroused a fair degree of enthusiasm. It was least 
esteemed in Italy and shared the fate of the other legends 
of the Middle Ages in that land, which was always so averse 
to the romantic and mystical. Bernardo Tasso, the father 
of the great poet, took Amadis de Gau/a, in 1544, for the 
basis of a prose imitation, which in 1560 he worked over 
into a heroic poem, Amadigi di Francia, understanding by 
Gau/a, not Wales, but France. Besides this attempt at an 



172 SEQUELS TO AMADIS OF GAUL. 

Italian adaptation of the story, there appeared in Italy a 
long translation in many books of the original text. Yet 
Amadis never penetrated into Italian life and sympathy as 
did Renaud of Montauban or Roland and Charlemagne. 
The Italian people were too matter-of-fact, too logical, above 
all too democratic to care for a type which was the ideal of 
of feudalism. 

In England the comparative interest felt in Amadis was 
not great, not perhaps for the same reasons which obtained 
in Italy, but because this repetition and expansion of the 
legends of the British came into competition with the direct 
tradition of Arthur's reign, and the renown of the Round 
Table. A translation from Des Essarts soon made its way 
across the Channel, and the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney 
reflects the Spanish romances of chivalry. A translation of 
the French version introduced Amadis de Gaida into Ger- 
many also, where from various accounts left by later writers 
it seems to have enjoyed considerable popularity. This 
short survey makes it evident that it was France which gave 
a new lease of life to the old hero and his descendants, and 
carried his reputation into the countries of the North. 

So much for Amadis and its tribe. We are done with 
them, but not yet with their rivals. When the barber and 
curate united to destroy the harmful books of Don Quixote, 
they did not condemn to the stake all the volumes they 
found in the hidalgo's library. Among those which they 
recommended to grace was Tit-ante el Blanco, a " treasure 
of enchantment and mine of pastime," and particularly 
good for its tone of realism. It is very likely that modern 
Anglo-Saxon restlessness can hardly form so unbiased an 
opinion as the leisurely Spanish gravity of the sixteenth 
century, for in our eyes the curate's praise of this book 
seems slightly overdone. As a matter of fact Tiranie the 
White has not plot enough to aspire to the rank of a 
genuine novel, though by its success in keeping its hero 



T1RANTE THE WHITE. 173 

constantly in mind, it does preserve the necessary unity of 
action. This feature of the story might indeed give it the 
name of a biographical romance, like so many poems of the 
Breton cycle, since the erotic element in it does not appear 
until the second part of the narrative is reached. But if 
the truth may be told regarding Cervantes' favorable opinion 
of the work, it seems quite clear to us that the great novelist 
found in Tirante el Blanco a predecessor of his own Don 
Quixote, and that the former is no less a parody on the 
genuine romances of chivalry than the latter. Tirante is 
more respectful and not so much of a burlesque, because in 
the middle of the fifteenth century — the approximate date 
of its composition — it might not have been safe to openly 
ridicule so cherished a story as the one of Amadis and 
Oriana. Whether or not this view is tenable each reader 
may decide for himself. Yet there are in Tirante so many 
points of resemblance to Amadis that our conclusion sug- 
gests itself. Either it parodied the popular chapbook, or 
else it furnished the latter with several novelistic elements 
which later on redounded greatly to Amadis' profit. What 
these elements are will appear from the analysis. 

Tirante, a Breton noble on his way to London, runs 
across a hermit, William of Warwick, who is reading a 
French treatise on military art. At the approach of Tirante 
the hermit lays aside his book and tells him his history, 
already made known to literature by the poem, Gui de War- 
wick. The knight soon proceeds to London, where he 
mingles in court life, joins in celebrating St. John's Day, and 
performs many exploits at the ceremonies which attend the 
marriage of the English king with the princess of France. 
Though in the jousts Tirante receives enough wounds to kill 
a dozen men, he recovers from them all, while his adversaries 
have the additional sorrow of being hooted at for their lack 
of valor by the street urchins of the capital. Many descrip- 
tions interrupt the progress of events and give the author, a. 



174 TIRANTE THE WHITE. 

Valencian noble, by name Martorell, a chance to display his 
facility. Thus, a funeral of one of Tirante's opponents is 
related in detail, combats with German knights are pic- 
tured at length, and a somewhat over-gallant explanation of 
the founding of the Order of the Garter is humorously 
given. But after the knight had practiced all the rules of 
chivalry which the hermit had revealed to him, and had 
reported his proficiency to his instructor, he turned his face 
toward the East, where he distinguished himself both as a 
warrior and a courtier. He delivers Rhodes from the assail- 
ing Genoese, and fills the office of lord high general adviser 
and arranger of battles and weddings. Turks, Moors, 
Byzantines, and Franks of all shades move to and fro on the 
scene. Even Arthur is summoned forth to aid the story, 
and mediaeval traditions are freely drawn upon, among them 
the plot of Eracle, Gautier of Arras' roman d'aventure, 
whose fame seems to have been a lasting one. 

Finally Constantinople is reached by the hero, and the 
love story begins. The imperial princess, Carmesina, 
coquets with Tirante, who replies in kind, while his jolly 
companions besiege the hearts of the ladies in waiting. 
Many tricks are played on unsuspecting courtiers, and the 
whole narrative descends to the very verge of the burlesque. 
A prime mover in the action, and the wit of the story, is the 
maid of the princess, Placerdemivida (Pleasure of My Life), 
whose practical jokes and free observations belong rather to 
the naturalist school in fiction. The frequent attempts of 
Tirante to gain Carmesina's favors are interspersed with 
scenes of jealousy, which are occasioned by the stratagems 
of a widow who is seeking to win the hero's affections, while 
all the time discourses on knighthood and honor are liber- 
ally thrown in. At last Tirante is tricked by the widow into 
believing that his mistress is unfaithful to him, and he leaves 
the court on an expedition against the Turks, without saying 
farewell to Carmesina. 



TIRANTE THE WHITE. 175 

But a storm drives his solitary ship on the African coast, 
where he is found by the King of Tremecen and welcomed 
to the royal household. He soon has an opportunity to 
show his gratitude by defending the king against his ene- 
mies, and then by converting both king and queen to Chris- 
tianity. Placerdemivida, who had been carried to Africa 
with Tirante, there rises in the world, and becomes at length 
the ruler of a respectable kingdom. So when Constanti- 
nople is again in straits the two friends are able to bring a 
large army to its relief. Tirante is then pardoned by the 
princess, the Turks are of course defeated by him, and the 
marriage between hero and heroine finds no further obstacle. 
But suddenly, on the eve of the ceremony, Tirante suc- 
cumbs to an attack of pleurisy, the emperor dies of grief on 
hearing the news, and the princess' life is cut short by 
despair. 

After reading this curious tale we are compelled to 
believe that Martorell, its author, was not only a clever man 
but a bold one. The animus of the whole narrative is satire. 
Side by side with high-sounding theories of knightly honor 
are sketched the actual doings of the knights. They go out 
to fight the wicked, but indulge in love-making of the carnal 
sort much more than in single combats with their fellow- 
sinners. After Tirante's sojourn in London, where he did 
indeed joust most valiantly, he appears rather as a general 
commanding great armies, than as a knight-errant courting 
fame through the might of his own right arm alone. The 
other characters of the book are even inferior in tone to the 
hero. They possess naturally some good traits, but the 
qualities which they mainly display are of the commonplace, 
every-day order. Placerdemivida, who is next to Tirante in 
importance, is a genuine go-between, and plays a part which 
the Spanish drama developed later to so great an extent. 
The author must have been conscious of the low range of 
his conceptions, since at the end he kills off his respectable 



I7 6 TIRANTE THE WHITE. 

personages and leaves the future of the empire in charge of 
the unfaithful empress and her lover of low degree ; strokes 
of irony keenly perceptible to a public which had been 
nourished on the high ideals of Amadis of Gaul. 

As to the exploits in the narrative, after the absurd exag- 
gerations of Tirante's prowess and vitality at London, there 
are very few which do not belong to the world of fact. En- 
chantments are entirely absent, excepting an absurd scene 
in which Arthur figures, and the deliverance of a maiden 
from a snake's form by means of a kiss — a favorite episode 
of the Arthurian legends. Hardly a single giant appears on 
the scene. No distressed girls or private individuals are 
avenged. No castles are besieged or taken. But when it 
comes to the plain details of battles, accidents, jokes, or 
love-making, Tirante el Blanco has no superiors in its 
century. Its whole spirit is bourgeois* like the stories of 
Boccaccio or the inventions of Ariosto, and its ridicule of 
the aristocratic traditions, propagated by the romances of 
chivalry, is as unmistakable as the bent of Don Quixote. 
Skepticism is its very essence. Why it did not destroy the 
faith of the people in their notions of knights-errant and 
chivalrous usages, can be understood only in the light of the 
fact that even to-day the seeming sway of realism in litera- 
ture has in no way diminished the popular demand for 
romantic fiction, in which virtue always triumphs over vice. 
Amadis de Gaula had not yet risen to the dignity of a liter- 
ary composition. Tirante el Blanco found it still among the 
common people, and Martorell's shafts of satire glanced 
harmlessly away from the unpretentious chapbook. A cen- 
tury and a half later, after the romances of chivalry had 
become the craze among the nobility and the educated 
classes, and were declining in favor, the plebeian, Cervantes, 
was able, by means of his greater talent, and with the aid of 
more favorable surroundings, to accomplish what the Va- 
lencian knight had attempted in vain. It is also to be ques- 



TIRANTE THE WHITE. 177 

tioned whether, before the introduction of printing into 
Spain, Martorell's parody was known to any but his imme- 
diate friends. And its publication, in 1490, came at the 
wrong moment to influence public opinion. 

For all Spain was then at the flood-tide of patriotic and 
religious exaltation. The common soldier and the knight 
were pressing onward toward the Alhambra in the full con- 
fidence of driving the infidel invader from his last foothold 
on Spanish soil. The fall of Granada consecrated Amadis 
de Gaula to the reverence of the whole redeemed nation. 
Ridicule and irony have no place in ages of enthusiasm, 
and Spanish enthusiasm was to be kept at a high pitch for 
several generations to come. Close on the recovery of 
Andalusia came the news of a new continent. A decade 
later Italy, the seat of the national faith, was practically 
annexed to the crown of Aragon. Another ten years had 
barely passed when the ruler of Burgundy and Flanders 
became the king of the united country, to be called not 
many months later to the Empire of Germany. The 
dominion of the world was almost a fact, and evident to 
each inhabitant of the peninsula. It was by the loyalty and 
valor of such knights as Amadis that this prosperity had 
"been attained, and it was a genuine knight-errant who still 
sustained it in his very person before his people. 

Charles V. was a paladin as well as a ruler. He honored 
the traditions of chivalry, and by the greatness of his power, 
and the elegance of his bearing, kept its spirit ever present 
before his subjects. Wars abroad and tournaments at home, 
celebrated with all the ceremony of the Middle Ages, and 
adorned with the splendors of a colonial empire, allowed 
no moment for the relaxation of chivalrous ideals among the 
Spanish nations. We cannot, therefore, wonder that the 
romances which had pictured such an existence of glory and 
honor were cherished and increased; that not only the 
family of Amadis was carried out to its remote descendants, 



178 THE PALMERINS. 

but that also other races of heroes were created in emula- 
tion. To be sure the new narratives could only be imita- 
tions of the older, inasmuch as the latter themselves were 
devoid of a traditional background. But because of this 
absence of a previous existence in fact, the fancy of the 
author was all the more unrestricted in the composition of 
his works, and was rather incited to greater efforts through 
the knowledge that any interest which might be aroused by 
them would depend on the merits of his own inventions. 

The most successful of these imitations of Amadis de 
Gaula is the series of novels celebrating the deeds of the 
Palmerin family, particularly the book which relates the 
fortunes of Palmerin of England. The series was started 
by the appearance of a story called Palmerin de Oiiva, 
which seems to have been printed at Salamanca in 1511. 
Its author is unknown. The story is very much like that 
of Amadis, the hero Palmerin being the ante-legitimate son 
of Florendos, prince of Macedonia, and Griana, daughter of 
the emperor of Constantinople. The infant is exposed to 
its fate in the good old style, and is found by a hermit on a 
hill covered with palms and olives, from which vegetation it 
took its name. When grown to manhood the foundling 
leaves the good hermit in search of his parents, and does 
many mighty deeds, after which he is knighted by his father 
who, of course, does not recognize his offspring. Numerous 
adventures follow, in which magic plays an important part. 
Palmerin delivers the German emperor from his rebel 
vassals and wins the love of the imperial princess Polinarda, 
whose acquaintance he had previously made in a dream. 
All now goes well for a time. Palmerin adds to the budget 
of his fame exploits in England and along the Mediter- 
ranean. He visits even Babylon, and has the satisfaction of 
refusing the hand of the local princess. Now he returns to 
Germany for rest. But Polinarda's brother Trineus, who 
had accompanied Palmerin as far as the Mediterranean, 



THE PALMER INS. 179 

had been lost in that region and had been enchanted, taking 
on the form of a dog. It was now necessary for our knight 
to seek him oat, and on the way he frees his parents from the 
stake to which they had been condemned for murder. A 
birthmark makes him then known to his mother, and the 
emperor is glad to acknowledge him as his heir. He is not 
long now in disenchanting Trineus, espousing Polinarda, and 
becoming emperor of the East. 

There is hardly anything in this romance which is new or 
striking, unless we consider it a novelty to introduce into 
the legends of chivalry certain tales of Greek mythology. 
For Trineus was treated somewhat like Ulysses' crew. We 
also find in Palmerin de Oliva a few traces of its native soil 
in the Moorish names, and in the combats which might very 
well have taken the duels of Moors and Spaniards for 
models. Otherwise there is no allusion to Spain in the 
book. Though the story was so commonplace, it had a 
fair success in the land of its birth, and was even carried 
into foreign countries. In France it was translated in 1546 
by Jean Maugin. At Venice it was reprinted in the original 
and in an Italian version, and in England it was done into 
our tongue by the indefatigable Anthony Munday. 

The popularity of Palmerin de Oliva in Spain was suffi- 
cient to give rise to a sequel, Primaleon, evidently by the 
same author, whose hero was the son of Palmerin and Poli- 
narda. His half-brother Polendos, whose birth was the 
result of a stratagem on the part of his mother, the queen of 
Tharsus, comes in for a good share of its attention. Polen- 
dos begins his exploits and the novel by kicking an old 
woman down the palace steps, a proceeding which allows 
her to reveal to him his ancestry. Polendos is valiant, if 
not mild of manner, and on learning of what stock he was 
he starts off to make himself worthy of it. He fights with 
many opponents, and finally rescues his mistress Francelina, 
who had been enchanted in a castle by a dwarf and a giant. 



180 PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 

Primaleon in the meantime bad formed a close friendship 
with Edward of England, and had shown his prowess by 
slaying many knights sent against him by Gridoinato avenge 
herself for the death of her brother, the magician, at the 
hands of Palmerin de Oliva. Primaleon does even better 
than kill the servants of the lady. He gains access to her 
castle and enthrones himself in her affections, thanks to her 
lack of a previous acquaintance with his face. 

Primaleon contains few interesting events, and its ideals 
are far removed from those of a true and perfect knight. 
Yet it suited the times well enough to receive the honor of 
translations into French, Italian, and English, and to be 
followed in Spanish by P/atir, the story of the son of Prima- 
leon and Gridoina. This sequel is of no particular merit, 
nor is a sequel to it, Flotir (known only by an Italian trans- 
lation) of much account. From such rivals as these, who 
degenerated so speedily, Amadis had nothing to fear. 
Their exploits were but repetitions of his, their notions of 
honor, loyalty, and knight-errantry were on a much lower 
plane than his, and the literary dress in which they appeared 
before the public was lacking in both texture and color. 
The time for any genuine inspiration in the romances of 
chivalry had evidently passed. Neither the descendants of 
Amadis nor the scions of this new family had attained suffi- 
cient eminence to revive the stories of feudalism ; and the 
propagation of both races had nearly ceased, when an off- 
shoot of the Palmerin dynasty suddenly imparted to his 
family a glory and distinction second only to the fame of 
the original history of Amadis of Gaul. 

This new hero who was to retrieve the fortunes of his 
house, and with them reflect the golden days of the romances 
of chivalry, was a son of Edward of England by Flerida, 
daughter of Palmerin de Oliva. From his double line of 
descent he received his name, Palmerin of England. The 
book which recounts his achievements was curiously enough 



PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 181 

in Portuguese, like the prototype of Amadis, and was proba- 
bly written by Francisco de Moraes, a Portuguese noble 
who had been attached to the embassy at the French court, 
and who wove into his narrative one of his own personal 
experiences in Paris. Moraes may have composed his work 
between the years 1540 and 1548, but if this is so (as there 
seems little ground for doubting) the original copy was lost, 
and the story has been preserved to us in a Spanish version 
of the years 1547-48, which was made by Luis Hurtado, a 
poet of Toledo possessed of considerable literary reputa- 
tion. The novel as we now have it is in two distinct parts, 
and offers a constant parallel to the story of Amadis. The 
author was also well read in the deeds of the Palmerin 
family, as his frequent reference to Palmerin de Oliva and 
Primaleon clearly shows. 

The romance begins with a hunt organized by the Eng- 
lish king, Duardos (Edward). Engrossed in the pursuit of 
a wild boar, the monarch reaches the castle of the giantess 
Eutropa, whose brother had been slain some time before by 
Palmerin de Oliva. The king is detained here for a while, 
but succeeds finally in winning the friendship of Eutropa's 
brother, the giant Dramuziando, a good and courteous spec- 
imen of his race. Meanwhile the queen, Flerida, who had 
gone in search of her husband, has given birth in a forest 
to twins. These were forthwith carried off by a wild man, 
attended by two lions, and their lives saved by the wife of 
the savage. Ten years have flown. One of the twins, 
Florian, has been found in the woods by a knight and 
carried to London, where Flerida brings him up under the 
name of the Child of the Desert. The other twin, Pal- 
merin, with his foster-brother, Selvian, is in his turn carried 
to Constantinople in Polendos' ship, where he receives cre- 
dentials from the Lady of the Lake, is knighted, and elects 
to serve Polinarda, Primaleon's daughter, who consequently 
girds him with his sword. In a tournament which soon 



182 PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 

takes place much fame is won by a strange knight, wearing 
on his shield the picture of a savage man leading two lions. 
Not long afterward Polinarda, irritated by the freedom of 
Palmerin in the avowal of his affections to her, forbids him 
to come again into her presence, and he leaves the court in 
despair. 

All the heroes have now become knights-errant, and seek 
adventures, which arrive thick and fast, portrayed with 
much elegance of description. The servants of the 
giantess Eutropa are untiring in their efforts to get revenge 
against the Palmerin family, by pitting the heroes against 
one another. In this way, Palmerin, who has at length reached 
England, fights his brother, not knowing him in his disguise 
as Knight of the Savage Man. The heroes find a defender 
against Eutropa's tricks in the magician Daliarte of the Dark 
Valley. The objective point of all the champions is still 
Dramuziando's castle, where Edward has been so long con- 
fined. Here the giant has forced his prisoners to defend his 
home, and as each new assailant arrives some captive friend 
overcomes him and adds him to the others. Primaleon 
even is defeated by the giant in person, but this misfortune 
paves the way to the end. For the Knight of the Savage 
comes up to release his relative, overthrows all the captives 
in turn, and is about to subdue Dramuziando, his last oppo- 
nent, when Daliarte spirits him away, in order to reserve 
the honor of the final deliverance for Palmerin, who soon 
after takes the castle and frees all the knights. 

Here ends the first part of the story. In its plan one 
may easily see how it won for itself the favor of the public. 
The plot is so distinct. The center of all action is the 
castle of Dramuziando, and by the successive arrival of all 
the knights before its gates the romance gains a unity to 
which Amadis itself was a stranger. Then the interest is 
kept up by the delay in the punishment of the wicked and 
the triumph of the truly good. Evil succeeds for a time, and 



PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 183 

the outcome of the struggle is uncertain until the curtain 
falls on the last scene. In the recital of exploits there are 
more combats left undecided than in Amadis, more are 
stopped by friendly intervention, and more are animated 
by fervent apostrophes to lady-loves. In addition to this 
diversity of incident, Palmerin de Inglaterra surpasses its 
model in variety of description, in love for natural scenery, 
and in a pleasing absence of moral reflections. Yet Pal- 
merin lacks the vigor and freshness of Amadis, itsartlessness 
and directness. More softened and refined, the tone of the 
later novel is also less inspiring and elevating. Without 
any foundation in popular tradition it was unavoidable that 
Palmerin should repeat what had already been said. Its 
crises are almost parallel to those in Amadis, and its central 
figure, the giant's castle, had already been made a familiar 
invention by the Orlando Furioso. 

The second part of this romance cannot claim the merits of 
composition possessed by the first. The plan of the narra- 
tive is less definite and artistic, and there is too much 
magic in the frequent use of the black cloud and the book. 
Instead of exhortations to respect the weaker sex there are 
many slurs on woman inserted in the most unexpected 
places, and evidently prompted by the personal animus of 
the author. The changed relation of lover to mistress, 
already hinted at in the first part, has here been carried to 
an extreme. The knight is still humble and obedient, but 
the lady has become harsh and overbearing without a plaus- 
ible reason. She claims to be offended by the very thought 
of service done her, and the slight favors she consents to 
bestow are most grudgingly granted. It is quite probable 
that this feature was strengthened in Moraes' work by the 
example of the pastoral novels, since he follows the latter in 
the introduction of his private mishaps, and very likely may 
have emphasized after their manner the coldness of his 
heroines. This would seem to be quite clearly proven by 



1 84 PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 

the fact that Moraes did borrow from the pastorals certain 
traits of composition, as the siestas which his characters 
enjoyed, and carving the names of the lovers in the bark of 
trees. He also may have been acquainted with some of the 
Greek novels, which were beginning at this time to attract 
the notice of modern readers, for in the action of Palmerin 
of England we find Dame Fortune to be a powerful factor. 
The story differs also from previous romances of chivalry 
in the definiteness of its topography. 

In the second part of Palmerin there are two centers of 
interest — two pivots for the plot. The one is the castle of 
Almourol, in Portugal, where dwells the beautiful Mira- 
guarda, whose portrait on a shield hanging from the walls of 
the fortress is to be defended against all gainsayers, by those 
knights who have come under the spell of her charms. In 
the location of this castle appears for the first time any 
mention of the Spanish peninsula as a theater of events. 
The other center of interest is Constantinople, as usual. 
This capital is once more attacked by all the forces of the 
infidels, and is again protected by the flower of Christian 
chivalry. The two rallying-points — the one romantic, the 
other historical — are connected in turn by the deeds which 
the same knights perform at both. In inventing this plan 
Moraes can certainly not be accused of being wanting in 
constructive ability. The story in the second part goes on 
with an account of court life in London, its joustings and fes- 
tivities, together with Daliarte's revelation of the birth of the 
brothers, a visit to the cave of the Savage, and an excursion 
to Dramuziando's castle. The beauty of Miraguarda of Por- 
tugal becomes noised abroad, and Florendos is the first to 
appear as her champion. Palmerin is reserved for greater 
deeds. As he leaves England he is carried away in a boat 
to Perilous Island, where Eutropa has prepared many 
enchantments to subdue him. But he dispels these by his 
courage and loyalty, releases the knights whom they have 



PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 185 

held in bondage, and makes so thorough work of the giantess' 
rule that he drives Eutropa to suicide. This episode con- 
tains the best features of the novel, both in conception and 
composition. Palmerin, on landing at the Island, is imme- 
diately confronted with all the creations of magic. He first 
comes upon a fountain guarded by two lions and two tigers, 
which, for a time, fill him with terror, and for the moment 
force him to retreat : 

" Wherefore having gone back a short distance he began 
to be ashamed, so much so that his duty stirred and incited 
him, so that he turned about. And with shield on arm 
and sword in hand he came up to one of the corners 
of the beautiful and limpid fountain. There one of the 
tigers received him most valiantly. For with one clean 
leap he jumped at the shield of the knight, bending it 
toward himself with so great a might that the straps broke, 
to which it was bound, and left the knight without a shield. 
Which made him so angry and full of wrath that he did not 
fail to burden the beast in such a way as to wound him in 
one of his legs, and so severely that the tiger could not 
move about freely. But to his aid came the other three 
animals, and so furiously that Palmerin thought this ad- 
venture one of the most fearful he had ever undergone. 
However, seeing the danger which presented itself to him, 
he did not wish to appear afraid : but turned on one of the 
lions, which was in advance of the others, and cut off his 
two paws so that he fell to the ground. Then he stooped 
down to take up his shield which the tiger had left. But 
the other lion came to attack him, and approached so near 
that he seized him by the helmet, pulling it toward himself 
with so much force that he tore it from him so roughly that 
the knight fell forward on his hands. And thus, as he was 
leaning forward, the tiger seized him, and hugged him so 
tightly in his paws that, without the strength of his mail, he 
would have torn the good knight to pieces, but he, seeing 



1 86 PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 

himself reduced to such straits, gave him a thrust through 
the heart. Whereat the tiger fell prostrate. And seeing 
this, the lion which had torn off the helmet did not fail to 
approach the prince, who quickly put forward his shield, 
upon which the lion placed his two paws, and Palmerin 
gave him a sword-thrust below, so powerful that his bowels 
gushed out and he fell dead at his feet. But still he had 
not made the place so safe that one would dare to drink at 
the fountain. For it was still guarded by the tiger whose 
paw he had almost cut off at the beginning. . ." And so 
on until the last animal is dispatched and a new trial of 
shadowy horsemen meets our hero. 

The delight of the author in such descriptions leads him 
to the constant invention of new ones. Particularly does 
he favor bridge fights, with which he blocks up all the high- 
ways of western Europe. After the exploits above nar- 
rated he leads Palmerin, with Daliarte as a guide, to the 
castle of Almourol on the banks of the Tagus, a stream 
which Moraes eulogizes with patriotic fervor. There 
Palmerin finds Florendos acting as Miraguarda's champion, 
defeats him in a joust before her eyes, and calls down her 
anger on her luckless knight. Heartbroken at his lady's 
disdain, Florendos wanders off and becomes the companion 
of a sorrowing shepherd — the hero of the pastoral stories 
which were now coming into prominence. Soon afterward 
Dramuziando reaches Almourol and offers to defend 
Miraguarda's shield. Against him all the lesser lights of 
the romance ride in vain, until the adventures at this place 
are brought to an unwelcome end by the theft of the shield 
by the pagan Albayzar of Babylon, who had been urged on 
by his mistress to this unchivalrous action. Albayzar, how- 
ever, is not allowed to rest with his booty, but is forced 
to sustain many combats, while during his absence from 
Babylon his lady, Targiana, is hotly wooed by the prince 
Florian, who has reached that place after many warlike and 



PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 187 

amorous exploits. For Florian is the Galaor of Palmerin de 
Inglaterra, just as his brother is its Amadis. 

With the niching of Miraguarda's shield the scene of 
action shifts gradually to the East, and after a time settles 
down at Constantinople. There Albayzar appears with the 
shield of Targiana also, which he places by the side of 
Miraguarda's and challenges to a trial at arms all unbelievers 
in the superior loveliness of his mistress. A condition of 
the combat is that his opponents should bear on their 
shields the portraits of the ladies whom they champion. 
As each is vanquished by Albayzar his shield, with its 
portrait, goes to join the trophies won for Targiana. So the 
miscreant overcomes the devout and accumulates his gallery 
of European beauties, until one fine day there enters the 
lists a knight clad in black armor pictured with flames, and 
carrying a shield having flames on a black field. But 
because the shield has upon its surface no portrait Albayzar 
refuses to joust with its owner. Whereupon the black 
knight makes reply : 

" ' Sir knight, you ask much of him who has little power. 
For if the shield which I present is not accompanied by 
that wnich you demand and which I would fain desire, it is 
for nothing else than to make it resemble the life of him 
who carries it ; thereby informing you that I have seen 
a time when I could have shown upon it a likeness, as the 
condition of your jousting wishes ; which would have given 
you food for thought and to me a heart to but little stand 
in fear of you. But at present I can show you only this 
somber color in which you see me clothed, while beg- 
ging you to pardon me. For it is the larger part of that 
which fortune has left me.' ' Sir knight,' answered Albay- 
zar, ' I would indeed that the face with which you threaten 
me were in your hands. For then I would make you know 
that I carry another which all the faces in the world do 
envy. However, seeing that the emperor of this state long 



1 88 PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 

ago stayed his progress to look upon you, let us do our 
knightly duty. For the honorableness of your words and 
the chagrin which you feel have abundantly satisfied me.' " 

Thus with fine speeches and hard blows the exploits of 
Almourol are renewed at the capital of the East. As all the 
knights had first found their way to the banks of the Tagus, 
so now they approach, from all directions, the shores of the 
Bosphorus. Joust succeeds joust, and festivities close the 
daily tournaments. But Moraes is not content with portray- 
ing combats alone. The more subtle inventions of Amadis 
tempt him to friendly rivalry, while one episode on which 
he evidently spent much effort, and by which he set great 
store, is a duplicate to the trial of chastity in Amadis. He 
tells how once on a time a noble of Thrace had killed his 
daughter's lover and had sent her his heart in a cup. The 
heartbroken girl fills the cup with her tears and then leaps 
from the castle window to her death. The King of Thrace, 
who is also a magician, gets possession of the cup, congeals 
in it the tears, and offers his enchanted daughter, Lionarda, 
to the knight who can melt them. The successful man 
must be both brave and faithful in love. In the trial at 
Constantinople all fail, and Florendos is even set on fire by 
the cup. But Palmerin breaks the spell at last, frees the 
princess, and, being provided with an eligible partner him- 
self, turns this additional blessing over to Florian. 

The story now returns to the usual theme of knight- 
errantry. Duels and wars multiply. Particular attention 
is paid to a campaign in Navarre, where Florendos and 
Albayzar unite against its nobles, who for some reason which 
does not come to the surface are decidedly in ill repute with 
our author. Miraguarda's shield is won back by Florendos 
after many adventures, and Albayzar marries Targiana, 
whom Florian had deserted. Finally a series of weddings 
invite the presence of all the Christian knights to Constanti- 
nople, while the Turks, stirred up by Albay/sar, attack the 



PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 189 

city. Bloody battles follow in which fortune favors now the 
one and now the other side. Many heroes are slain , the ladies 
of the court are removed by Daliarte to Perilous Island, and 
the city is razed to the ground. After several reverses the de- 
spair of the faithful and the valor of Dramuziando, their ally, 
accomplish the total rout of the pagans. Constantinople is 
rebuilt, but Perilous Island remains enchanted and invisible. 
The merits of Pahnerin de Inglaterra are sufficient to 
make it worth our while to read it at the present stage of 
novelistic decadence, though we may not share, after all, the 
eulogistic enthusiasm of the curate in Don Quixote. Its 
movement is lively, its solution is kept well in abeyance, its 
episodes are well arranged, and many of its scenes are excel- 
lently developed. And there is one feature in it which 
deserves especial mention. It is the greater regard for the 
setting of the story. Indeed, in the definiteness of its scenes 
of action Moraes' romance may be said to prepare the way 
for the actual portrayal of real events. And the story leaves us 
with the feeling that the exploits in Pahnerin might possibly 
be facts, whereas we know that all the happenings in the 
shady topography of Amadis are impossible. From the 
moment natural scenery is sketched, and geography plays a 
part in the story, we can fancy that characters of flesh and 
blood may perform the tasks assigned to the creations of the 
fancy. So that immediately in the footsteps of Palmerin 
might come a novel which would relate the deeds of men, 
celebrated in the world's past, and would conform to his- 
torical data. Thus the historical novel would be born, and 
the traditional magic of the Middle Ages, which intervenes 
in the romances of chivalry, like a deus ex machina, or the 
Tyche of the Greeks, would give way to a more natural 
agent in the solution of crises, to wit, the blunders or the 
foresight of the actors themselves. Palmerin, to be sure, 
comes nearer the truth, regarding the infidel attacks on Con- 
stantinople, than does any of its successors, but in the roles 



1 90 PALMERIN OF ENGLAND. 

of its kings and generals it is as far from real life as the most 
extravagant among the romances. A little more courage on 
the part of its author and he would have had the credit of 
creating a new type of novel. But he stopped short on the 
way, and when the romance of chivalry passed from his 
fatherland into France, it fell into the hands of a finical few 
who delighted in retaining its obscurity and its unreality. 
In becoming in a foreign land the property of the educated 
classes exclusively, the modern novel of erotic adventure 
was deprived of its foundation of realism, or at least of the 
belief in its reality, on which it rested while among the 
Spanish people, and thus lost the advantage which it would 
have gained from the intellectual progress of its own proper 
constituency. In the hands of the precieuses of the seven- 
teenth century it grew stale and insipid like themselves, and 
when they had converted it into the heroic-gallant novel of 
their coterie, the vigor and freshness of its original current 
was found to be absorbed in the sands of the literary desert 
which bounded the Sea of Tendre. 

Of course Palmerin is not all merit. Its faults are 
numerous and evident. There are too many heroes in it, 
the outcome of the larger number of its adventures is known 
in advance, and its enchantments are feeble imitations of 
what had gone before. Having no traditional basis it 
appealed only to a limited set of readers, and very probably 
never penetrated to the common people who had cherished 
the deeds of Amadis so long and so faithfully. It there- 
fore had no influence, or but little, in reviving the declining 
interest in the romances of chivalry, and it seems to have 
had no effect at all on the French fiction begotten by 
Amadis. Yet there is one favorite theme of the seventeenth 
century novel, which Moraes, judging by his Palmerin, 
could have fathered quite as well as Montalvo — the liking 
for that species of discourse which goes under the name of 
courtly conversations. We have seen how deferential were 



PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 191 

the knights in Palmerin to one another, but we should read 
the account of the meeting of the prince with his mistress 
Polinarda. When this is compared with the interviews of 
Amadis and Oriana it is clear that, in the half century or 
more between the two novels, the knights have become 
more loquacious and better exercised in subtle discourse : 

" ' My lady, if the happiness of my fortunes has kept this 
reward for me to put an end to my labors, I shall have no 
occasion to complain, being very well assured that your 
presence is able to make me forget all the vexations which 
I have suffered up to this time. For which I remain under 
obligations to Love, toward whom I have always been faith- 
ful and obedient, so that by his favor I have been led to 
this place, where I receive unspeakable contentment as a 
reward for my labors, which I find of little importance com- 
pared with the good that presents itself before my eyes, so 
great an honor that I esteem myself under perpetual obli- 
gations ; yet I would much wish that this great obedience 
should not put undue restraints upon me. Assuring you, 
my lady, that Fortune has always availed me at the time 
when I wished the more to hold your greatness in high 
repute and to esteem it, which will not be satisfied in seeing 
me deprived of liberty ' " — and so on indefinitely. We can 
hardly wonder that the princess manifested considerable 
impatience at this verbosity, and had to be exhausted by 
a second installment of relative clauses before she would 
condescend to grant the boon so oratorically desired, 
namely, to graciously allow her faithful servant to salute her 
imperial hand. Yet harangues like these and love-making 
by rhetoric were the delight of polite society long after the 
romances of chivalry had passed away. Reduplications of 
words and periods between the leading characters, and 
particularly between the hero and heroine, are one of their 
most abiding legacies to romantic fiction. 

There is not much to be said regarding the further history 



192 PALM ERIN OF ENGLAND. 

of the Palmerin family. Sequels to Palmerin de Inglaterra 
were published in Spain, but met with little favor. In 
France the romance soon appeared (1552-53) in a transla- 
tion by Jacques Vincent, dedicated to Diana of Poitiers. In 
1555 an Italian translation was published, and in 1567 
Moraes himself gave it once more a Portuguese dress. 
Munday, as usual, did it into English from the French of 
Vincent. On French soil also Chapuis, a professional 
translator, gave it a sequel called Darinel, after a son of 
Primaleon. But in spite of this attempt to acclimate the 
series in a northern atmosphere, no new life entered into the 
Palmerin family as it had into the race of Amadis. Nor 
at home did the heroes of this house ever enjoy the popu- 
larity of their older models, at least so far as the test of few 
or many editions may prove. The heyday of the romance of 
chivalry in the peninsula was during the reign of Charles V., 
the last of the knights-errant. With the rule of the gloomy 
and retiring Philip II. a change came over the popular 
fiction of Spain, very like that alteration in the tone 
of French literature under Louis XI. The aristocratic story 
of courtly life passed away with the decay of the nobility. 
The popular adoration for the feudal chieftains, who had led 
the long onset of the nation against the Moors, was under- 
mined by the rise of the bourgeois class, which had come 
into greater prominence from the discovery of America and 
the conquests of the Empire. The first half of the sixteenth 
century was for Spain its crowning period of power and 
glory, and the romance of chivalry, which eulogized those 
qualities that were the mainsprings of national expansion, 
retained its hold on the imagination of the people long after 
the state of society which produced it had passed away, 
and long after the exhaustion of its own original and tradi- 
tional material. But after the sixth decade of the century, 
when the tide of temporal prosperity was fast ebbing, and 
the armies of the nation were retreating from their outposts 



DON B ELIAN IS DE GRECIA. 193 

in every land, when the poverty, which had succeeded the 
sudden wealth caused by the inflow of the precious metals 
from the colonies of the West, no longer secretly lurked in 
the cabins of the farm-hands, but was invading in full light 
of day the old castles of Castile, at this time of dishonor 
and want, Spain had no heart to blind herself with fresh 
visions of fanciful glory. The hard reality of national 
decay was bearing down with its full weight on the imagina- 
tions of the people, and the new and disagreeable conditions 
of private and public existence demanded new representa- 
tives in fiction. 

Yet we must not conclude that the romance of chivalry 
willingly relaxed the powerful grasp it had so long main- 
tained on the minds of the nation. Though its two great 
families had ceased to awaken popular interest in their 
descendants of later generations, it was possible that other 
heroes, whose exploits should not come into competition 
with those of Amadis and Palmerin, might be welcome on 
their own account. So the novel of erotic adventure was 
continued for another score of years, and as many as forty 
more specimens of it sought a permanent place in the affec- 
tions of the readers of fiction. Most of these works, how- 
ever, failed completely in their desires. So to enumerate 
them here would be of little profit, and to analyze them 
less. Still, there is one among them which stands out from 
its fellows, as being not only the best of them all, or rather 
the least poor, but also as having obtained the honor of a 
somewhat extended criticism by the curate of Don Quixote. 
This romance is Don Belianis de Grecia, written in 1547 by 
Jeronimo Fernandez, a native of Madrid, and expanded 
later on, so that by 1587 it was composed of four parts, and 
contained some eight hundred octavo pages. 

It tells how Belianis, son of Beliano, emperor of Greece, 
and of the Spanish princess, Clarinda, distinguished him- 
self at the early age of twelve by killing a lion and a giant. 



194 DON BELIANIS DE GRECIA. 

Afterward he and his friend Arfileo, prince of Hungary, 
were entertained by a maiden who dwelt in a cave. But 
Belianis had brothers whom he must find, and so he went 
in search of them, attended by the maiden. On his way — 
strewn with many combats — the maiden tells him of the 
beauty of Florisbella, princess of Persia. After Belianis 
has been deemed worthy of the ceremony of knighthood 
on account of his deeds, he rescues his father from peril — not 
being recognized, of course — and proceeds to Persia, where 
he undergoes all kinds of trials in joustings, abductions, 
magic spells, enchanted fountains, and the like. He delivers 
the princess from her enemies, fights his father, again un- 
known to him, and accomplishes all the feats familiar to the 
romances of chivalry. Under the pseudonym of Knight of 
the Basilisk he is entertained by kings and receives flatter- 
ing attention from queens and princesses ; and in all his 
career the wise Belonia is his ever-present aid, and the epic 
account of the wars of the Greeks and Trojans his constant 
stimulus. After fighting unawares with one of his brothers, 
Belianis wins Florisbella's love, but is immediately obliged 
to leave her in order to avenge a suppliant. During his 
absence the emperor of Trebizond, by demanding the hand 
of the princess, starts a new series of obstacles to her happy 
union. General wars ensue, in which Babylon is the center 
of events, until the prowess of our knight compels the rev- 
elation of his ancestry, and all points to a speedy solution, 
when suddenly every one of the princesses is stolen 
away, and the author takes breath for a while, in promising 
a sequel which never appeared. 

So we do not yet know how it fared with Belianis and his 
lady-love, and this is little loss to us, as is plain from what 
we do know about him. For the author had no idea of plan 
or composition. The episodes of the book are strung 
together with little sequence, and the stuff of which they 
are made is not at all new. The memory of the deeds of 



RELIGIOUS ROMANCES. 195 

Amadis and Palmerin was too strong with Fernandez for 
the success of his own story, and in imitating his predeces- 
sors he had not sufficient talent to improve on them. He 
is prolix also, is overfond of letters and conversations, and 
delights to a wearisome extent in disguised characters. That 
the curate should have taken the trouble to save him from 
the pyre of Don Quixote's library is, perhaps, to be ex- 
plained by his late date, and by a popularity revealed in the 
successive expansions of the book. But no other proof 
that the romances of chivalry had run out, and that the 
way was fully prepared for Cervantes' satire of them, is 
needed, than the very existence of such a conglomeration as 
this last exponent of their ideas, Don Belianis de Grecia. 

It is well understood at the present day that the change 
in the tendencies of Spanish literature in the last half of 
the sixteenth century was not due to the mere alteration of 
the social condition of the country. Out of the wars against 
the Moors of Andalusia and the South, and the stalwart 
piety which those wars had fostered, had arisen a practical 
organization of the religious sentiment of the nation, which 
in process of time became a powerful instrument in the 
hands of the central government for the discomfiture of its 
more independent subjects, and the establishment of its 
unquestioned sway among them. The hold on the popular 
mind of this perfected administrative machine has never 
been questioned It did not stop with the exercise of civil 
jurisdiction, or with the defense of the true faith against the 
inroads of heresy. It investigated private life and pried into 
the secrets of individual thought as well, while of course the 
favorite literature of both nobles and bourgeois came within 
its assumed field of activity. 

As early as the fourth decade of the sixteenth century ? 
the religious guides of Spain sought to adapt to their own 
ends the universal passion for the romances of chivalry. In 
1543, or thereabouts, they tried the popular taste with the 



I9 6 RELIGIOUS ROMANCES. 

publication of a novel enjoining piety and devotion, but 
composed after the pattern of Amadis or Palmerin. This 
story, called Lepolemo, from the name of its hero, tells how 
the son of the emperor of Germany was stolen away to 
Africa while but a child, and how he was brought up among 
the infidels. When grown to manhood he gained great fame 
at the court of the sultan, under the title of the Knight of 
the Cross, from a cross which had been marked on his 
shoulders in early boyhood. He was still a Christian, and 
refused to turn Moslem even to win the hand of the sultan's 
daughter. On the contrary he returns to Africa in search 
of his old nurse, and experiences many adventures ; is 
made a prisoner, frees his parents, who had been captured 
on their way to Jerusalem, and suffers all manner of hard- 
ships. Finally he reaches France, wrests Calais from the 
English, is entertained by the dauphin — whom he had liber- 
ated from a Moslem prison of the East some time before — 
falls in love with Andriana, the royal princess, and marries 
her after having been recognized by his parents. 

The remarkable thing in all this narrative is not so much 
its devout spirit as the fact that hardly an adventure is 
described which is not a possible one. No tournaments are 
held in Lepolemo, the enchantments it recounts are few, its 
topography is real. In these particulars it bears a close 
resemblance to Pahnerin de Inglaterra. Yet to the 
reader this zealous defender of the faith seems a con- 
scious imitator of the old heroes of chivalry, but in a kind 
of pious parody. The knight's parents, for instance, are on 
their way to the Holy Land, not to interview Persian beau- 
ties and combat Oriental magic, but to assuage by a pilgrim- 
age the grief they felt for the loss of their son. And instead 
of dwarfs and maidens and Urganda, who carry the letters 
and tell the news in the traditional stories, we find here 
chaplains and friars acting as their substitutes. But such as 
it was, the religious departure in Lepolemo aroused imitators 



RELIGIOUS ROMANCES. 197 

later on, and called out the inevitable sequel to itself, 
which, strange to say, did not uphold the principle at 
the foundation of the original. For Leandro el Bel, 
published in 1562 by Pedro Luxan, returns to the style 
of the regular romances. Leandro, who is the son of 
Lepolemo, goes through the same series of adventures as 
Palmerin of England, unless perhaps Leandro's are more 
unreal. And there is no moral purpose whatever, either in 
the episodes of the story or in its solution with the mar- 
riage of the hero to the daughter of the Eastern emperor. 
So we may infer that Luxan, who also claims to be the 
author of the twelfth book of Arnadis, has perhaps been 
guilty of a little satire in thus perverting the moral intent 
of his predecessor. 

The Church, however, was not to be rebuffed by the ill 
success of this first venture in pious romancing, and in the 
palmy days of the Inquisition it returned to the charge 
more than once. But these new ventures differed decidedly 
from the first in the material out of which they were made. 
Lepolemo was content with giving a religious bent to genuine 
exploits of chivalry, and with the introduction of a few minor 
characters in clerical dress, but the religious romances which 
followed this pioneer, during the subsequent decades of the 
century, were more directly doctrinal. The earliest of 
them, and one of the best, appeared in 1554 at Antwerp, 
at that time under Spanish rule. It is called La Caballeria 
Celestial, and was written by a certain Hieronimo de San 
Pedro. In a letter to the reader the author states that the 
characters in his romance will not be Merlin, Urganda, 
Amadis, Tirante, Oriana, or Carmesina, but lovers of the 
truth and holy women. The subject of the book is taken 
from the Old Testament, and its contents are divided into 
" marvels " instead of into chapters. The narrative begins 
with the creation of the world and of a Round Table, occu- 
pied by both earthly and heavenly knights. Angels are 



I9 8 RELIGIOUS ROMANCES. 

naturally the members of the latter class. After the fall of 
one of them, Lucifer, Prince Adam is engaged in a war 
with the Knight of the Serpent. In this way the narrative 
goes on, setting before us various Scriptural events, until it 
reaches King Hezekiah, who finally conquers the Knight of 
the Serpent, and thereby ends the romance. 

La Caballeria Celestial does not fall far short of an alle- 
gory, for besides the presentation of Biblical personages, 
and evil and good angels in the role of mediaeval champions, 
it contains two actual personifications, Allegory and Mor- 
alizing, whose office it is to point out the religious doctrine 
which each episode is intended to convey. So we have a 
mixture of history and of fancy that may have been edify- 
ing to the subjects of Philip II., but which does not 
stir the pulse overmuch at the present day. Nor indeed is 
there any evidence to indicate that this romance, and others 
of its kind, were ever in demand in ascetic Spain of the 
sixteenth century. The religious novels, in spite of the 
temporal might back of them, rarely received the honor of 
a second edition, while the genuine romances of chivalry 
survived all imitations, and all attempts at repression on the 
part of the state. Edicts were promulgated forbidding 
their exportation to the colonies, on the ground of their 
being pernicious literature, and petitions were presented to 
the crown asking that their sale at home be prohibited. Yet 
notwithstanding all attacks from the clergy, and all the 
competition of the rising pastoral and picaresco novels, 
and more fatal than all enmity from without, notwith- 
standing their own internal decline, the long line of vol- 
umes which celebrated the fame of the race of Amadis 
and Palmerin kept their hold on the mass of the Spanish 
people many years after the vogue of their rivals had passed 
away. Cervantes' satire marks their downfall with the 
more intelligent classes only, and booksellers still found 
profit in new editions of the stories he had ridiculed, even 



RELIGIOUS ROMANCES. 199 

when Don Quixote had become as familiar a knight as 
Amadis. 

To be sure, this fact is an ever-present one in the history 
of fiction, that whatever is aristocratic or assumedly so, 
whatever is unreal, romantic, punishes vice and upholds 
virtue, takes the mind out of the narrow rut of daily exist- 
ence, and diverts it by exciting the fancy and by picturing 
what might be rather than what is, that the very stories 
which ignore toil and drudgery, or pass lightly and hope- 
fully over their unwelcome attributes, in a word, ideal fiction, 
will be read by the large majority of readers, if not by the 
most intelligent, and will outlast all changes in fashion, 
whim, or style. And thus it was with the romances of chiv- 
alry even in the Spain of Philip II. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE ITALIAN PASTORAL, NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC. 

It seems rather late in the day to be talking about pas- 
toral literature. The march of man has left all that sort of 
thing so far behind. No one retires in this present epoch 
to remote Arcadian glens to commune with nymphs, or 
sport with Pan and his wanton train. Naiads, nereids, 
satyrs, Diana and her maidens, all have ceased to allure 
mortals to their rustic abodes, and when humanity seeks 
nature now it is for relaxation and calm repose. The 
forests are merely trees and underbrush, the river banks 
turf and flowers. To give them inhabitants is to violate 
the principle of modern recreation, release from thinking and 
from social intercourse. Yet the pastoral idea has survived 
in art to some extent. The school of Boucher and Watteau 
in painting, and tapestries adorned with woodland scenes, 
retain some hold still on the public taste, while sculpture 
continually renews itself through the ideal outlines of classic 
forms. But in literature there is not a trace of this old- 
time fashion. The return to nature of Rousseau and St. 
Pierre was prompted by political beliefs rather than by a 
disgust for the world's corruption, while Atala, Rene, and 
the effusions of the whole romantic school lent to natural 
scenery the subjective coloring of their own emotions. 
To-day the storm has passed and the outer world has 
reappeared calm before the gaze of mankind. It neither is 
required to reflect the turmoil of human passions, nor sup- 
posed to be alive with the creatures of man's idle fancies, 
for the present generation desires a nature absolutely 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 201 

peaceful, unruffled by the personification of even her own 
attributes. 

It is therefore a practical impossibility for us, cosmopol- 
itans and latter-day as we are, to appreciate the feelings of 
the more localized inhabitants of the Peloponnesus and the 
islands of the Mediterranean in regard to fostering nature. 
The ancient Romans themselves did not enter into these 
views even with all their striving after pastoral sentiment. 
Nor can we sympathize fully, in the midst of our progress 
in civilization, with the more recent enthusiasm with which 
the descendants of the Romans greeted the renewal of the 
pastoral idea in Italy under the Medici. Yet the cause of 
their ardor is clear. The overwrought minds of the pro- 
motors of the Renaissance sought relief from the failure of 
their ideals in a nature which appealed to them by its 
absence of all art and culture, just as the heroes of 
romanticism looked to it for a response to their wild long- 
ing to overturn the whole universe. We can understand 
the desires of both these generations. We can share to 
some extent the spirit of the latter, for we still experience the 
results of its struggles ; but the surroundings of renascent 
Florence or Rome are in no direct communication with our 
own environment, and the period of discouragement for the 
future of humanity is still so remote, that the despairing 
records of past failures appeal to our minds only as facts in 
the historical expression of thought by literature. It is 
therefore as literary history only that this chapter and its 
successor can be of interest to the reader. 

The development of the pastoral in Italy corresponds 
quite closely in time to the evolution of the romance of 
chivalry in Spain. Here, however, the likeness begins and 
ends. For the romance of chivalry is a product of the 
Middle Ages. It portrays the feudal ideal, and its con- 
stituent elements were expressed in the new vernaculars of 
Europe. But the pastoral, so far as its career in Italy is 



202 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

concerned, reaches back into the life of antiquity, and its 
forerunners spoke in the Latin tongue. The romance of 
chivalry also, though aristocratic in tone, was popular in the 
widest sense of that word. It represented the accumulation 
of national traditions, which had been fostered by the people 
no less than by the nobles, and it had circulated among all 
classes of society long before it claimed any standing as 
literature. 

But the Italian pastoral went through a very different 
development. It was not in the least popular, because it 
was unknown to the people. It grew up among students of 
antiquity, literary men by profession, who cultivated it 
sporadically and as an exercise in Latinity. Consequently its 
development was slow and uncertain. Occasionally such 
writers as Boccaccio, who considered his mother tongue a 
more natural vehicle for the expression of ideas than the 
conventional Latin, turned their attention to these survivals 
of Roman poetry, and gave them a modern dress and a 
more national setting. In this way Italian legends entered 
into the formation of the pastoral, and combined with the 
material inherited from the ancients to make up a composite 
literature, half learned, half popular, which obtained a wider 
circle of readers than the Latin eclogues of the humanists 
could expect. Yet, in spite of the infusion of this element 
of folk tradition, the Italian pastoral in its literary form 
remained wholly artistic both in its conception and in the 
treatment it received. It was therefore highborn in senti- 
ment, not after the manner of the romance of chivalry in 
celebrating people of noble birth only, but highborn in its 
appeal to refined and cultivated feelings, to a nobility of 
education rather than an aristocracy of blood. For this 
reason the Italian pastoral throughout its whole existence 
continued to be the peculiar diversion and property of the 
literary circles of Italian society. 

Before the appearance of the pastoral in mediaeval Italy, 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 203 

rural life had been the theme of a distinct kind of lyric 
poetry in France and Provence. The pastourelles, as they 
were called, set their action in natural scenery, and made 
shepherds and shepherdesses the actors of the story. Soon, 
however, the shepherd was replaced by the court gallant, 
and the plot of the poem weakened to a mere love episode. 
The pastourelles were very much in favor with all classes of 
society, and quickly spread from France to her Romance 
neighbors of the South. In Italy they very likely gave rise 
to the first musical operas as early as the last half of the 
thirteenth century, but in no way do they appear to have 
affected the wholly classical material of the Italian pastoral. 
Nor did the pastoral notion of the Greek novel have any- 
thing to do with this later application of the idea to fiction. 
Whatever was known of the Greco-Roman novelists in the 
Middle Ages was confined wholly to the stories of erotic 
adventure. Daphnis and Chloe attracted attention only in 
the later years of the Renaissance. Yet the predecessors of 
Longus, the elegiac poets of the Hellenistic period, were 
discovered early in the revival of learning by the collectors 
of the Italian courts, and appear to have served as models 
for one kind of pastoral composition, the dramatic. But 
with the other kind, the narrative, or more strictly speaking 
the narrative-lyric, Greek authors and Greek literature 
had nothing whatever to do. It was born into the modern 
world before Greek manuscripts had come out of their 
hiding places, or the Greek tongue had been taught to the 
dialecticians of Bologna. So the pedigree of the Italian 
narrative pastoral is direct and easily traced. It is the 
legitimate descendant of Latin pastoral poetry, whether 
mediaeval or classical, and its great master in both epochs 
was Virgil. The Eclogues of this poet from the birth of 
Dante to the death of Sannazaro were the models for all 
bucolic poems among the humanists ; and directly through 
his own works, and indirectly through the imitations of his 



204 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

disciples, Virgil's conception of nature became also the con- 
ception of the pastoral narratives in the vernacular. 

The conditions which gave rise to the revival of the pas- 
toral idea in mediaeval Italy were not like those which 
fostered it in Rome of the Caesars. In the latter it was the 
result of an endeavor to turn away the mind from intrigue 
and corruption to the contemplation of a primitive simplic- 
ity, untainted by the refinements of civilization. With 
Boccaccio and Sannazaro, the fathers of the modern narra- 
tive pastoral, the portrayal of rustic life was mainly an 
aesthetic diversion. In their hands pastoral writing was 
purely a branch of literature to be cultivated for its own 
sake, with no moral object in view. Or, if they had any 
subjective motive for their theories, it extended no further, 
and was no more serious, than to represent in disguise cer- 
tain episodes of their own lives. In this notion their teacher, 
Virgil, had set them a well-known example. And then Boc- 
caccio may possibly have had also an allegorical purpose in 
view, but Sannazaro was probably mainly influenced by 
literary fashion, and may not be accused of any ulterior 
objects. 

So much for the narrative pastoral. With the dramatic, 
which was confined almost entirely to Italy of the sixteenth 
centum, the conditions were the same as those which in- 
spired the poets of decadent Greece. The revival of learn- 
ing had come, the renaissance of art had followed. Style 
and taste had been elevated and purified, erudition had 
ceased to be a rarity. Yet with all this intellectual quick- 
ening, and with all the improvement in the direction of the 
senses, no moral foundation had been laid for the firm abid- 
ing of lofty aspirations. State and people had come far 
short of the standard set for them by the humanists and 
artists of the first period of the awakening. The rulers of 
the sixteenth century practiced the administrative principles 
illustrated by Machiavelli's Prince. The heads of the 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 205 

Church, though promoters of learning, were opposed to all 
admission of scientific methods into the study of ecclesias- 
tical doctrines, or the investigation of natural phenomena. 
Too lax in their daily walk and conversation to present to 
the world shining examples of Christian character, they 
relied for the advancement of religion on the temporal 
power, while the terrors of the Inquisition guarded the 
orthodoxy of the people's belief without being able to con- 
form its heart and life to the profession of its lips. 

Thus liberty, civil and religious, thus progress in the 
seeking after truth, psychical or physical, had been 
checked, oppressed, and finally rooted out in Italy of the 
sixteenth century. And yet there can be no doubt that it 
was the anticipation of this liberty, the confident expecta- 
tion of this knowledge, which had inspired the minds and 
souls of the leaders of the Renaissance. But when, in the 
stead of these gains to mankind, they saw cunning become 
all-powerful in the political world, and bigotry gather to 
itself all sacred things, their disappointment was the more 
bitter as their hopes had been the more exalted. Discour- 
agement is the tone of Italian literature after the popedom 
of Leo X. and the career of Lucretia Borgia. Satire and 
irony, with excessive worship of form, are its characteristics. 
Ariosto and Aretino are its exponents. And after the wave 
of incredulity had retreated, and the eyes of the sober- 
minded were no longer dazzled by the brilliancy of its mani- 
festations, those who had learning and science truly at 
heart saw that the enthusiasm for antiquity had spent itself. 
Freedom had not profited by it, in Italy, at least ; truth had 
apparently not been the gainer by all this expenditure of 
strength. It was then that the ideals of ancient Greece 
revived again. Refinement in manners and in expression 
was once more accepted as an evidence of moral and 
material retrogression, and the yearnings of those who 
despaired of social progress turned back to the primitive 



206 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

ages of mankind; to the patriarchal simplicity of rural 
existence. It was under the influence of such feelings that 
Italian pastoral drama was created, and that the Age of 
Gold became the theme of Tasso and Guarini. 

We find, then, two distinct currents in the life of the pas- 
toral in Italy, which run side by side without attempting to 
blend. The older of the two and the stronger is the stream 
of the narrative pastoral, appearing for the most part in a 
prose form, while the dramatic pastoral chose poetry for the 
expression of its sentiments. In order to understand the 
history of the narrative pastoral in Italy it will be necessary 
to glance back to its development in antiquity, and examine 
its characteristics in Virgil and Theocritus. The appear- 
ance of the pastoral in literature dates from the time of the 
Sicilian poet. His Idylls, in Greek meter, show already, in 
the third century before the Christian era, a perversion of 
the genuine original rural poetry. They are half real and 
half fancied. In many instances they portray the actual 
shepherd life of the island, but elsewhere it is the author 
himself who appears in pastoral dress. This transition, of 
course, is a natural one ; and it is interesting to note that it 
arose so early in the history of the literary pastoral, since 
it is the substitution of the authors and his friends for the 
shepherds and shepherdesses of the nomadic state that gave 
the prose pastoral its popularity and continued success in 
modern society. 

When Virgil took for the model of his Eclogues the Idylls 
of Theocritus, he extended the latter's notion of self-dis- 
guise to the action of nearly every theme. He himself 
appears in a leading part in almost all of his pastorals, 
though he very skillfully keeps the setting of his little 
dramas entirely rural. The exposition of his Eclogues is 
generally in the form of a dialogue between shepherds, or it 
may develop into a poetic tournament between two shep- 
herds, who thus while away their noontide rest surrounded 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 207 

by their flocks. Virgil's landscape is the scenery of his 
native place, just as the nature described by Theocritus is 
Sicilian, yet neither the Roman nor the Greek hesitate to 
bring in Arcadian herdsmen from that region of the Pelo- 
ponnesus which was sacred to folds and the god Pan. 
Virgil, however, goes further than the introduction of him- 
self, his friends, and neighbors into his bucolic poetry. He 
changes often the tenor of the conversation, so that instead 
of discussing the interests and affairs of his assumed actors, 
it more frequently dwells on the joys and trials of the poet 
and his acquaintances. Even thinly veiled allusions to his 
benefactors and to the events of the time are not absent 
from his verses. And in this way allegory entered into the 
composition of the pastoral. 

In the Middle Ages, Virgil shared with Ovid the admir- 
ation of students and authors. He was more popular than 
his rival, even though his reputation for wisdom may not 
have been so great as the latter's. It was therefore to be 
expected, that whatever Virgil and his earlier disciples wrote 
would be imitated most faithfully by his uninventive fol- 
lowers of more modern times. The beginning of allegory 
in his Eclogues set the fashion for subsequent pastoral 
poetry, and by conforming so well to the didactic bent of 
mediaeval scholasticism, became the peculiar feature of 
mediaeval bucolics. The Latinists of the Christian monas- 
teries preserved, to be sure, the Greek names inherited from 
Theocritus through their great example, as well as many of 
his typical commonplaces. But the sentiment of their 
pastorals is Virgilian, and their purpose is allegorical. 
More and more in the bucolics of these writers subjective 
ideas are seen to displace objective, while their personal 
emotions and the narrative of their own adventures become 
the confessed subject of their verses. Through the exten- 
sion of this process it was inevitable that the share of 
nature in their works should be reduced to smaller and 



208 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

smaller dimensions. Fictitious characters made the setting 
of the action a purely conventional one, and eliminated all 
freshness from the pastoral descriptions. And the kind of 
literature which these eclogues at first represented gradually- 
changed into a kind which was the exact opposite of its 
parent. 

An instance of the extreme to which the allegorical 
pastoral was carried is found in a certain class of mediaeval 
poetry of a religious nature. Virgil, in his Eclogues, had 
disguised as shepherds persons of rank belonging to his 
acquaintance, but his characters still remained actual living 
beings. His later imitators among the pious schoolmen 
went much further than he, and in their pastorals substi- 
tuted for human actors outright personifications of senti- 
ments and emotions. In this way the primitive poem of 
rural life was turned into an allegory having the object 
of advocating the doctrines of the Church. 

This phase of imitation, however, was not long-lived. 
The secular writers of the fourteenth century checked it in 
its development by a direct return to the fountain head, 
where they learned the real intention of the master. Per- 
haps the first author to disregard the allegorical fashion of 
his time was Dante, who at the threshold of the Renaissance 
went back to the original Latin of Virgil and wrote Latin 
eclogues patterned closely after the Virgilian manner, as 
witness his correspondence with Giovanni del Virgilio. In 
his turn Dante was imitated by Petrarch and Boccaccio in 
their Latin poetry. And so by the authority of these three 
great names was established again the Mantuan tradition of 
disguised characters. 

The first pastoral in the vernacular of the fourteenth cen- 
tury was not an eclogue, and no direct connection between 
it and Virgil's Bucolics can be traced, though the latter 
exercised upon it an undoubted influence. It is one of 
Boccaccio's earlier productions, written in 1341 or 1342, 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 209 

some years before his Latin eclogues, or those of Petrarch. 
The title it received from its author is L' Ameto, or La Comme- 
dia delle Ninfe Fiorenti?te. Like the later pastoral novels, 
of which IS Ameto is beyond question the prototype, Boc- 
caccio's story was made up of both prose and verse, the 
verse being in extent much less than the prose. Such a 
mixture of the two kinds of composition in the same pro- 
duction was not uncommon in the literature of the Middle 
Ages. A century and more before Boccaccio there had 
appeared in France one of the most charming examples of the 
kind, the still popular chante-fable of Aucassin et Nicolette. 
The plan of these literary compounds was to have the prose 
part tell the story and recite the adventures, and to use the 
poetry for the expression of feelings and ideas. In Italian 
such a notion had been successfully carried out by Dante in 
his Vita Nuova, though with him the songs were to be the 
chief element, and the prose merely a running commentary. 
It is quite probable that Boccaccio, with his wide range of 
literary knowledge, knew other examples of the sort now 
lost to us, and so may have modeled his Ameto on a story 
more pastoral in nature than either of those we have men- 
tioned. But whatever may have been his direct model, or 
even were Ameto due to a conception wholly its author's 
own, it is plain that the Vita Nuova has shaped, to a great 
extent, the thought of Ameto, though in its form, and in 
the purpose of each of its constituent parts, it would seem 
nearer to the idea of Aucassin et Nicolette. For in the Vita 
Nuova there is traced the evolution of earthly love into 
heavenly. In Ameto the same theme is attempted, but 
in a manner much less refined, and in a spirit more sensuous 
than devout. 

Ameto opens with a prose prologue, wherein the author 
displays much learning in mythological lore and shows 
his mediaeval training by a closing invocation to Love 
and the Lady. After the prologue the story beg'ins. With 



2IO THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

the feeling of a born artist the setting of the action is 
first described, a wooded hill near Florence. Next the hero 
is introduced in the person of Ameto, a hunter who pursues 
the game in the forests of that region. One day as he was 
resting by the stream, meditating on the rough pleasures of 
the chase, he heard a song such as he had " never before 
heard," and arousing himself and going toward the sound 
he saw a group of maidens " amidst the flowers and the tall 
grasses of the river's brink." These maidens are in fact 
nymphs, the lawful dwellers among classic shades. They 
notice the approach of the mortal hunter, they bid him 
welcome to their company, and the nymph Lia sings again 
to him the song he had just heard. It is a song in praise of 
love. It fills Ameto with delight. It leads him to confess 
his ignorance of love, and ask for instruction in the ways of 
such an entrancing passion. The nymphs are won over by 
his modest bearing and his ardent prayers. They not only 
furnish him the desired training, but when he returns to the 
hunt he finds in Lia a constant helper. He rejoices in her 
presence, until winter (here pictured with a rhetorical out- 
burst savoring strongly of Virgil) interrupts by its snows 
their happy meetings. The approach of spring brings them 
together again. Now midsummer is at hand and with it the 
festival of Venus, to which Ameto is led by Lia and her 
companions. After the celebration of the feast the nymphs 
and our hero withdraw to a meadow, where they sit down in 
the shade of the trees close by a cool fountain. Lia, whom 
Boccaccio describes here at length, speaks of the gods and 
of human frailties. But her discourse is interrupted by the 
arrival of two other nymphs, whose beauty and charms are 
likewise minutely delineated. Suddenly the sound of a shep- 
herd's pipe breaks in on this quiet party, and turning they 
see near at hand Teogapen, accompanied by his fleecy flock. 
At the request of the nymphs the newcomer extols in song 
the might of love. No sooner is his melody at an end than 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 211 

two other most beautiful nymphs arrive. The assembled 
company demand further entertainment, and to amuse 
them Teogapen induces two friends of his (one of them an 
Arcadian) to engage in a singing contest. This musical 
duel, which passes off like those in Virgil — whom Boccaccio 
here imitates — results in the crowning of the victor by the 
nymphs. At last two more nymphs appear, the final 
couple, and Ameto, after feasting his eyes anew on the 
loveliness of these last recruits, breaks out into a hymn to 
the gods, whom he praises for his rescue from the existence 
of a rude hunter and for his initiation into the realms of 
love. 

This invocation by the hero brings the first and purely 
pastoral part of the narrative to an end. Nothing had as 
yet been introduced into the story but what was entirely in 
keeping with the rural life of primitive man, as it appeared 
to the eyes of antiquity, and there is no jarring difference 
in the tone of Ameto thus far from the more spiritual tenor 
of the Vita Nuova. Though his pastoral reveals a fresh- 
ness which those of the Latins did not possess (for Boccaccio 
can hardly be supposed to have had any direct acquaintance 
with Greek pastoral poets), yet in substance and in accidental 
allusions it shows no practical divergence from the ideas of 
the classical bucolics. The artistic paganism of the palmy 
period of Roman culture is successfully imitated here by 
the citizen of mediaeval Florence, and his knowledge of 
ancient literature had been so thoroughly assimilated to his 
thought, that the material which he drew so freely from 
his elders seems to be spontaneously his own. The only 
reservations which may be made in regard to the genuine 
classicism of Ameto are, on the one side, the sensuously 
detailed descriptions of the nymphs, which would not be 
allowed by the severe taste of the Augustan age, and on the 
other, the occasional hints that something higher, in senti- 
ment or purpose, was to come than had yet been vouchsafed. 



212 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

But suddenly into the purity of the pastoral tale breaks 
the realistic coarseness of the mediaeval story-writer. So 
entirely does the spirit of the narrative change that its first 
part would appear to be a prolonged introduction to the 
main body. For at the proposal of Lia, each one of the 
new arrivals among the nymphs agrees to tell the story of 
her earthly love, and to close the story with a hymn to the 
deity she especially honors. Ameto is made president of 
this symposium, and the stories begin. The nymphs are 
seven in number, and the stories are seven. As each 
tells her tale, Ameto falls in love with her, but recovers 
in sufficient time to become enamored of her successor. 
Unfortunately the stories are not in line with the avowed 
moral intention of the author. They greatly resemble the 
less elevating of the adventures told in the Decameron, and 
the mechanism or framework by which the stories are intro- 
duced in Atneto is practically the structure which Boccaccio 
used later in the Decameron. Their main topic is the theme 
of unhappy marriages, which most of the nymphs seemed to 
have contracted with little divine foresight, while the delight 
of these supernatural beings in relating the more repulsive 
features of their hymeneal state is only equaled by the joy 
with which they picture their final happiness in non-matri- 
monial alliances. The contrast of these exploits with the 
comparative cleanliness of the beginning of the pastoral is 
not agreeable to the modern reader, nor complimentary to 
the taste of the author. 

The accessories, however, to the material of these stories, 
the digressions and incidental descriptions, are not to be 
neglected in a study of the pastoral novel, for they indicate 
clearly the sources of Boccaccio's inspiration, and illustrate 
the character of his erudition. The dedication of each of 
the tales to some goddess of the old religion gives frequent 
occasion for allegorical amplification, and in the literary 
allusions which follow, Virgil's ALneid plays a prominent 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 213 

part. Many of the descriptions are elegant in diction and 
classical in tone. Among them are the picture of Pomona's 
garden, the details of Venus' loveliness and — somewhat dif- 
ferent but none the less striking — the account of the loath- 
ing excited in a young bride by her repulsive old husband. 
One of the nymphs, Fiammetta, relates the tradition of the 
founding of Naples in connection with the history of her 
love affairs. Lia, also, prefaces the account of her acquaint- 
ance with Ameto by the legend of the building of Florence. 
And her hymn to Cybele, which closes the series of stories, 
is remarkable for the manner in which certain doctrines of 
Christianity, as those of the Conception, the Trinity, and 
Transubstantiation, are interwoven with the commonplaces 
of heathen mythology. Indeed the hymn may be considered 
as typical of that uncertainty of outline and feature which 
characterizes the whole of Ameto, and contrasts it with the 
definiteness of the Decameron. Up to the very end of 
the pastoral we are vaguely suspicious that there is a solid 
basis of fact at the bottom of all this fiction, and are quite 
ready to believe that the author is amusing himself at our 
expense, by placing his own personal experience just outside 
the boundaries of our recognition. 

But Boccaccio had an object in the confounding of pagan- 
ism and Christianity in this hymn to Cybele. It is a shrewd 
artifice on his part to bring back his story from the contem- 
plation of earthly passions to a higher plane of thought, to 
the idea with which he began his work. So in harmony 
with this idea he now at last throws aside his sensual scenes, 
and presents the attributes of the celestial Venus before the 
eyes of the enraptured hunter. As these are revealed in 
the heavens there sounds down into the ears of Ameto the 
hymn of divine and eternal love. Yet his eyes are still too 
gross to gaze upon the ethereal radiance. He must first be 
purified from all terrestrial thoughts. To accomplish this 
cleansing Lia dips him in the fountain, and removes from 



214 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

him the stains of sinful desire. And now, a new being, he 
looks back in wonder on his former state of animal exist- 
ence, " and in short from a brute beast he seems to have 
become a man." This change of heart he consecrates by a 
hymn to the Trinity. Here the moral teaching of Boccac- 
cio ends, and the closing sentences of his story bring us out 
of the realm of allegory into nature's kingdom again. Even- 
ing is drawing nigh, and with its deepening shades the 
happy company of the groves disperse. The nymphs 
depart and the mortal, abandoned to himself, laments in a 
final poem his forced leave-taking of divine associations, 
and his return to an unsympathetic father's roof. 

Thus the beginning and the end of V Ameto were made 
to agree in purpose, and this purpose was to present a moral 
truth. So if we keep this first intention of the author in 
mind, the story, like the Vita Nuova, should be placed on 
the list of didactic treatises. But it was not the moral ele- 
ment in Ameto which attracted to it the attention of later 
writers. It was the form of mingled prose and poetry, the 
pastoral scenery and characters, and the biographies of indi- 
viduals which gave to this production of the fourteenth 
century its significance in the history of literature. Boc- 
caccio, like his masters, Virgil and Dante, has disguised 
events chosen from his own life or from the experience of 
his acquaintances. But this was not an unusual proceeding 
in his day nor before his time, and it seems quite evident 
that his contemporaries did not consider Ameto to be a 
novelty. At all events they did not imitate its plan or 
style. And when this first bloom of Italian literature had 
passed, its productions — saving the Divi?ie Comedy — remained 
unnoticed for at least a century. The humanists of the 
revival of learning turned away in disdain from the vernac- 
ular of the people, and endeavored to restore in their 
writings and conversation the Latin of Cicero and the 
SEneid. Their attempts at sketching nature were pure imi- 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 215 

tations of the eclogues of antiquity, or of the mediaeval 
Latinists, while the cultivation of such pastoral composi- 
tions as the example of Ameto would incite, was postponed 
for many generations. When the Italian language became 
again the vehicle of cultivated expression — in the last quar- 
ter of the fifteenth century — it found the conditions of liter- 
ary activity entirely different from the surroundings of the 
age of Petrarch. 

These differences were peculiarly in favor of those senti- 
ments which promote the growth of the pastoral. In the 
time of Boccaccio, when the discovery of manuscripts was 
adding every day to the world's stock of knowledge, and 
was increasing the zeal for learning, the educated classes of 
society were enthusiastic over human progress, and thor- 
oughly confident in a Utopian future for the world. In 
Ameto there is not the slightest trace of discouragement. It 
pictures, in its way, the birth of a soul, as Hawthorne has 
done in his Marble Faun. But by the end of the fifteenth 
century, in the Florence of Lorenzo di Medici, where the 
most brilliant results of the long period of intellectual 
quickening had been brought together, hope had failed, and 
the minds of men were shaded with sadness. For the 
Renaissance had revealed its treasures and could no longer 
attract its devotees by the allurements of fresh discoveries. 
The mental stimulus of a century and a half had not been 
accompanied by a corresponding moral awakening, and 
thus in the time of its exhaustion learning possessed no 
enduring foundation on which to build its own structure of 
independent scientific investigation. Literature deprived of 
knowledge, its ally, frittered itself away in debasing pur- 
suits. Art and form became its end ; thought and truth 
departed from it, and hence it is that Orlando Furioso is the 
fitting representative of its age. 

Under such conditions the more meditative souls slipped 
away from the doubt and discouragement which faced 



2l6 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

them, and sought refuge in that haven always open to 
decaying civilizations, the original state of man, the primi- 
tive simplicity, and the rustic happiness of the Age of 
Gold. The pastoral life of this ideal existence was revived 
in Florence and in Rome after the example of both Greek 
and Roman traditions, and the restful consolation which it 
could offer to the weary and despairing found expression in 
the Italian poets from Poliziano on. Now, this sentiment 
of despair is the more especial theme of the Italian dramatic 
pastoral, while the narrative kind follows rather in the foot- 
steps of Boccaccio. Yet it was inevitable that the atmosphere 
of its surroundings, and the prevailing fashion in literature, 
should affect the narrative pastoral as well, and in the 
Arcadia, the best specimen of the school, this contemporary 
longing for a pure life on earth and the return of the Age 
of Gold is disclosed by many a passage, and affects, how- 
ever unconsciously, the tone of the whole work. 

We must, then, study Sannazaro's story, both in its rela- 
tion to Ameto, of which it is the undoubted successor, and 
in the light of its attitude toward its own times, which it 
was bound to represent, like any successful literary com- 
position. The Arcadia was published in its complete form 
in 1504, more than 160 years after Ameto. It contained 
twelve prose narratives and as many eclogues or songs. 
Between these detached pieces an artificial connection 
was preserved by the presence of the narrator himself, 
who speaks in the first person, and who claims that the 
different episodes of his story are events in his own personal 
experience. This union of prose with verse is, perhaps, 
more artistically accomplished by Sannazaro than by 
Boccaccio, but the likeness of the two pastorals in their 
general plan, and the fact that many ideas of the Arcadia 
seem to have been suggested by corresponding ones in 
Ameto, point quite conclusively to a certain correspondence 
between the two, and thereby offer a reasonable explanation 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 217 

for Sannazaro's divergence from the spirit of the dramatic 
pastoral of his time. The title of the Arcadia may have 
been suggested by its author's general acquaintance with 
ancient pastoral literature, or by his familiarity with Virgil, 
who speaks of that favorite province in his tenth Eclogue. 
In keeping with its rural setting, the actors of the Arcadia 
are shepherds. But their disguise is very slight, and is so 
easily penetrated that Sannazaro himself becomes aware of 
the fact, and in the seventh prosa steps forward in his own 
name to relate events pertaining to his own career. Others 
of the shepherds are to be recognized as friends of the 
author. 

The Arcadia begins like Ameto, with a short prologue, 
where the superiority of nature over art, both in content 
and form, is confidently asserted. Next the scene of the 
action is given, a valley among the mountains of Arcadia, 
delightful for its deep shade and cooling streams, where the 
shepherds are wont to resort to rest from labor and to carry 
on their rustic amusements. There Ergasto, melancholy on 
account of unrequited love, is cheered by his friend, Sel- 
vaggio. All this is but the setting to the picture. In the 
divisions of the story following this introduction, the prose 
parts serve at first as commentary to the poetical, while the 
subject hinges wholly on the recreation and games of the 
shepherds. A festival is held in honor of the goddess 
Pales, the deity of the flocks, on whose temple are painted 
scenes from rural life, which reminds one of the pictures in 
the Greek novels of antiquity. Considerable space is also 
given to the account of various superstitions dear to the 
shepherds, among them the belief in the evil eye, which is 
still so strong with the people of Italy. The power of in- 
cantations is also shown ; and lovers obtain relief, as they do 
in the pastorals of all ages, by cutting the names of their 
loved ones in the bark of trees. A direct imitation of the 
Aineid is the reverence which these Arcadian herdsmen 



218 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

pay to their dead, and the manner in which they recall to 
grateful memory their departed friend, Androgeo, by sing- 
ing songs at his tomb. Then in the sixth eclogue comes the 
praise of the days of old, together with the lamentations of 
an aged shepherd over the evil present, and forebodings of 
a still darker future. On the other hand, in the portraits 
of his heroines Sannazaro follows closely after his fellow- 
countryman, and the description of the object of his affec- 
tions, the nymph Amaranta, abounds in those sensuous 
details which flowed so freely from Boccaccio's pen. 

With the biography of the author in the seventh prosa 
these parts of the Arcadia, which had been hitherto fairly 
equal to the songs in length, begin to expand proportion- 
ately to the eclogues proper. Sannazaro here appears in 
the character of an unhappy lover, the melancholy Sincero, 
and to comfort him for his bereavement his companion, 
Charino, relates to him an unlucky love affair of his own 
with a nymph. This consolation closes with the praise of 
rustic life, and various rules for bird-catching — that favorite 
subject of boudoir painting in more modern times. Now 
the assembled shepherds pass again to the discussion of 
magic arts and eulogies of Pan and his woodland temple. 
Laws are laid down for the guidance of him who pursues a 
shepherd's vocation (Sannazaro copies freely after Virgil 
in these rules), and incantations for the cure of love are 
enumerated. Afterward the fifth book of the ALneid is 
again put to use in the description of athletic sports, which 
take place before the tomb of Massilia — who is supposed to 
be the mother of Sannazaro — and in the eleventh eclogue 
the author, under the name of Ergasto, sings his lamenta- 
tions over her death. In this lament is found the only di- 
gression, and a slight one at that, from the skillfully main- 
tained paganism of the Arcadia : 

" But thou, beautiful above all and soul immortal, 
Who from the heavens perhaps dost hear me ..." 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 219 

It was now high time for the return of Ergasto to his 
native town and to active life once more. For this purpose 
a nymph became his guide, and led him, in a dream, through 
many subterranean marvels under the sea from the Arcadian 
groves to Naples. As he is approaching his home he hears 
two shepherds bewailing in verse the death of his mistress, 
Phyllis, and overcome by this new grief he bursts into a 
farewell to his rustic pipe, and brings his wanderings to 
an end. 

The composite character of the Arcadia did much to help 
on its success. Besides its reflection of Ameto, evident to 
Sannazaro's contemporaries, the devotees of the vernacular 
literature were won over by its many paraphrases of Petrarch, 
while the admirers of antiquity were flattered by the allu- 
sions to the fabled Golden Age and frequent imitations of 
Virgil. Even the journey of Ergasto underground was 
taken from the experience of Aristaeus in the fourth Georgic. 
The humanists of the age also were not left without some 
representation in the pastoral, for the lamentation on the 
death of Phyllis is an open adaptation from a Latin eclogue 
of Pontano, Sannazaro's steadfast friend. To make his 
work the more successful, Sannazaro deliberately excited 
the curiosity of his public by confessing to certain disguises 
among his actors, thereby arousing social interest in deter- 
mining their identity. Novels with keys began with the 
Arcadia, and like their model they never failed to meet 
with at least a temporary popularity. 

But when we come to look at the plan of the Arcadia we 
are obliged to admit that it merits less the name of novel 
than even Ameto. Unlike Boccaccio's story it has no gen- 
eral theme, and it is entirely devoid of any unity of action. 
A most artificial tie binds its separate parts together so 
slightly that it might well be looked upon as a simple collec- 
tion of prose and verse. It would also seem as though the 
original intention of its author was to make the poetical 



220 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

eclogues the chief part of his story and to subordinate the 
prose narratives to a purely introductory function. As he 
progressed with his task, however, this intention, if such 
existed, was lost sight of, and the eclogues became musical 
variations on a theme which the preceding prose parts had 
separately developed. There is certainly no plot running 
through this changing scene, and we are therefore obliged to 
consider the Arcadia as a mere literary amusement of its 
author. 

Sannazaro did not aspire at all after originality in thought 
or material, and was not content with the imitation of ideas 
alone. Many of his sentences are skillful paraphrases of the 
periods of his predecessors, and where one writer failed to 
fill out the exact notion which he wished to convey, his 
words were supplemented with a clause borrowed from 
another ; so that in the Arcadia we are constantly meeting 
with compounds of authors, and the deficiencies of Virgil are 
supplied by Petrarch, and vice versa. From the frequent 
occurrence of such additions, we may very properly con- 
sider the Arcadia to be the triumph of eclecticism in liter- 
ature. The talent of Sannazaro seems, indeed, to lie in his 
appropriation of clauses of greater writers, and in his deft- 
ness in joining together his loans. But he certainly showed, 
in addition to this talent, a remarkable faculty for word col- 
oring, and a keen sense of musical rhythm, and it was the 
combination of his eclecticism in expression with the har- 
monious flow of his period which won for his pastoral 
its great and enduring popularity. Nor must we forget 
that the Arcadia thoroughly suited the taste of the literary 
public to which it was addressed. It appeared at a time 
when people were tired of new conceptions, and preferred 
repetition in thought to the exposition of new ideas. Art for 
art's sake was the watchword of Italian literature in the 
closing decades of the Renaissance, and the Arcadia is one 
of the best exponents of that law. 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 221 

To the success of his pastoral Sannazaro contributed not 
a little by the variety and excellence of his verse. In the 
eclogues of the Arcadia he employed nearly all of the 
strophes known to Italian lyric poetry, while Ameto had been 
content with the use of the modest terza rima. The novelty 
of his rhymes appealed to the finical spirit of his contem- 
poraries, and their brilliancy cast all previous Italian verse 
endings completely into the shade. In the descriptions of 
the Arcadia there is also an advance both in color and in 
rhythm over the most elaborate periods of Boccaccio. San- 
nazaro's word pictures of games, festivals, the life and habits 
of his Arcadian herdsmen, composite as they were, and the 
result of a recast of what former authors had expressed, be- 
came the standard for the imitation of his successors, and 
entered into the later pastoral novel as truly classical scenes. 
And with the Arcadia begins that public lament of unsuc- 
cessful love, that solicitation of consolation, while all the 
train of sorrowings by day, of watchings by night, of reliev- 
ing the pent-up passion by carving the names of the loved 
ones on trees, will follow closely in the footsteps of the pas- 
sions depicted by this Italian master. So his half-actual, 
half-mythological surroundings will live on in fiction with a 
vitality which the changes of time and race and civilization 
will not be able to entirely destroy. 

It is a curious fact, however, that these novelistic con- 
tributions from the Arcadia have had a greater influence on 
literature outside of Italy than they had within their native 
land. The imitations of the Arcadia by Italian authors are 
numerous enough, to be sure, but are so inferior to their 
original that they added nothing new to the pastoral idea, 
and consequently demand no especial notice here. Their 
most palpable bearing on literary life is in the pastoral 
pseudonyms which they gave to the members of the various 
Italian academies, and in the fashion of poetical improvisa- 
tion cultivated by these assemblies of dilettanti. 



222 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

But in foreign lands the fancies and spirit of Sannazaro 
received a much greater development than at home. The 
Arcadia was not long in attracting the attention of students 
and tourists of France and Spain. In the latter country it 
played an important part in the development of a new school 
of lyric poetry, and affected strongly the tone and structure 
of the pastoral novel. In France the verse of the Pleiad 
reflected the elegance of Sannazaro's lines, and the wonderful 
novel of the great D'Urfe re-echoed many of the sentiments 
and ideas of its Italian forerunner. In England Spenser both 
admired and followed it, while Sir Philip Sidney borrowed 
from it its name at least. Still, after all the reckoning is 
made, the singular fact remains that no foreign author 
directly imitated the plan or composition of the Arcadia, as 
was done by so many Italians. And within Italy itself 
the narrative pastoral, in prose and verse, produced, curi- 
ously enough, but two works of any significance, Ameto 
and the Arcadia. 

The other branch of the Italian pastoral, the dramatic, 
is represented by a larger number of masterpieces than the 
narrative, but, on the other hand, has exercised less influence 
than its rival on the development of the modern novel. 
The pioneer writer of the pastoral drama was BoccaCcio, the 
originator of the narrative, and his Ninfale Fiesola?io is the 
first example of the kind in the modern vernaculars. In 
form this work belongs to the department of narrative 
poetry, being composed of nearly five hundred strophes in 
ottava rima. But in thought it is a genuine tragedy. 

The story of the Ninfale Fiesola?io is a combination of 
the tradition of Fiesole's origin with an account of rural 
love. Nature furnishes the scenery. The time is prehis- 
toric, or perhaps mythological, for the heroine of the tale is 
Mensola, one of Diana's nymphs. One day as the god- 
dess' train was sweeping by him, this nymph was seen in 
her beauty by the shepherd Affrico, who lost no time in 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 223 

becoming infatuated with her and in laying siege to her 
heart. The nymph rejects him with disdain ; yet the more 
ardent for his rebuff he plans a stratagem to win her. In 
spite of his father's warnings, Affrico dresses himself in a 
maiden's dress and mingles with the nymphs attendant on 
the deity. The disguise succeeds in its object. Mensola is 
deceived, and finds out her mistake only when it is too late. 

Though in the midst of her error and its consequences, 
the fear of her mistress restrains her from another interview 
with her lover. At the trysting-place, where they were 
again to meet, Affrico awaits in vain the return of his 
beloved. Days pass by, but still he lingers. Doubt changes 
to certainty and sadness to despair. At length on the banks 
of the stream, which was ever afterward called by his name, 
he succumbs to his sorrow, takes his own life, and dyes with 
his blood the clear waters. A burial is given to his body 
by his heartbroken father. In the meantime Mensola had 
been assailed by a fate hardly less unrelenting. Sheltered 
from Diana's wrath for a while by a friendly nymph, she is 
finally surprised by the virgin goddess in the act of bathing 
her child. Fleeing in terror, she endeavors to escape 
through the waves, but is herself changed into billows by 
the act of the outraged divinity. From her the other stream 
in turn received its name. The child, however, was saved, 
was brought up by its grandfather, and became in manhood 
the founder of Fiesole. 

The purpose of the Ninfale Fiesolano is plainly an 
adaptation of such stories as are found in abundance in 
Ovid's Metamorphoses ; and for this reason it closely 
resembles the Greek erotic tales, from which the Roman 
poet borrowed so freely, and which we have seen were one 
of the sources of the Greco-Roman novel. The plot of 
Boccaccio's poem contains also all the distinguishing 
features of the later pastoral drama : the meeting of the 
lovers, their courtship and their punishment, which is often 



224 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

self-inflicted. It presents, besides, the notion of disguise 
in sex, which afterward obtained so great success in the 
pastoral novel. But the intention of Boccaccio's poem is 
not so clear as its literary import. What he wished it to be 
we do not know. Surely there is nothing allegorical about 
it, as was the case with Ameto. He seems to have made 
use of the two streams near Fiesole to tell a story in the 
style of antiquity, and very likely considered his compo- 
sition in no other light than as a work of art. At all 
events this pastoral of his attracted no more notice from 
his contemporaries than his narrative in prose had done, 
and its influence on subsequent literature was even less 
than the influence of Ameto, if we may form an opinion from 
the evidence at hand. The rise of humanism submerged 
this poem with the rest of Italian compositions, and when 
the dramatic pastoral reappeared a century and more later 
on, it built itself up on as original foundations as though 
the Ninfale Fiesola?io had never existed. 

It was in 1472, at the brilliant court of the Medici, on 
the banks of the Arno, that the versatile Poliziano con- 
ceived the idea of inventing a new species of poetry for the 
pleasure of his generous patrons. It was to be a mixture of 
antecedent literature and, like so many inventions of the 
Renaissance, consisted in grafting a shoot taken from 
antiquity on a tree of modern stock. For during the 
Middle Ages there had grown up among the peoples of 
western Europe a kind of drama in the vernacular, which 
had its origins in the liturgy of the Church. The form the 
plays of this popular theater assumed in Italy went under 
the name of Sacra Rapprese?itazione. Poliziano, with the 
cleverness characteristic of the man, here saw ready to hand, 
and familiar to his public, a convenient framework for a 
new dramatic departure. Looking about for a subject for 
this setting, he hit upon the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, 
typical of the spirit that redeems the body from death and 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 225 

darkness by the breathings of its divine harmony. The 
theme was consonant with the traditions of his liturgical 
model. He adapted it to that model, and thus produced 
the beautiful pastoral drama of Orfeo. 

Naturally Poliziano was obliged to change his story to 
suit his purpose, yet he varied but little from the beautiful 
legend of the ancients. The shepherd Aristaeus is first 
presented to the spectators in the character of a longing 
swain. For he has learned by hearsay that the nymph 
Eurydice is endowed with charms lovelier by far than those 
of Diana herself. So he is incited to seek after such a won- 
der. On his approach Eurydice flees in terror, but as she 
escapes a serpent bites her in the foot, she falls, and soon 
expires. Her husband, Orpheus, comes up when too late to 
save her life, and follows her in sadness of heart to the lower 
world. The songs of the skilled musician prevail even against 
the hardheartedness of Pluto. The god of shadows gives 
over Eurydice to her suppliant spouse under conditions not 
fulfilled by Orpheus, for he looks back on his wife before 
their feet are clear of the infernal regions, and she vanishes 
forever from his sight. Now in his grief the singer for- 
swears henceforth all womankind, and for this oath is torn 
to pieces by the maddened Bacchantes of Thrace. 

Orfeo was not only a drama having a pastoral leaning, 
but, as may be surmised from the calling of its hero, it was 
a drama set to music, and may thus be counted among the 
best specimens of early Italian opera. As a matter of fact, 
when the theater of the ancients was imitated by the Italian 
writers of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, this play 
of Poliziano was divided, to conform to their supposed 
ideas, into acts and scenes, and through the excellence of 
its verse in octaves and terza rima it was regarded for many 
decades as the finest musical drama that had yet been repre- 
sented. But Orfeo did not take a high stand among pastoral 
plays pure and simple. The purpose of Poliziano in com- 



226 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

posing it was quite foreign to the spirit of such works as the 
Ninfale Fiesolano y and we place it here among the examples 
of dramatic pastoral mainly because of the pastoral dress 
of its characters. However, it begot successors which 
approached nearer to the kind of literature in question. In 
these imitations the action is more developed, while new 
features are added which emphasize both the unrequited 
love of shepherds for nymphs, and the unfortunate passions 
of the nymphs as well. The hatred of nymphs for satyrs 
becomes conventional in them. A favorite form of plot is to 
make a satyr love a nymph, who in turn loves a shepherd 
who loves another nymph, who loves another shepherd, and 
so on into an infinity of parallel loves which never meet, until 
a tremendous mental upheaval brings all back to the realms 
of finite life and forces a solution. These ingenious devices 
were afterward incorporated into the pastoral novel. 

Many of the musical dramas which the success of Orfeo 
called out in Italy were first given at the court of Ferrara, 
where the house of Este extended a never-failing patronage 
to whatever was eminent in art or in letters. It was for the 
head of that house that Ariosto wrote Orla?ido Fwioso, and 
under the generous protection of his descendants Torquato 
Tasso lived and labored half a century later. During all 
these years the elaboration of the incipient opera went on 
with increasing enthusiasm as the last product of the Italian 
Renaissance. Tasso, surrounded as he was by the cultiva- 
tors of the musical art, and seeing daily before his eyes 
evidences of its adaptability to dramatic purposes, could not 
have failed to be incited to try his hand at so popular a 
theme, and perhaps from the performances of these followers 
of Orfeo he conceived the idea of Ai?iinta. Tasso's libretto, 
however, is a genuine pastoral drama, although it is divided 
into the standard five acts of the classical theater, and makes 
use of the traditional chorus. Its setting is rural, and its 
actors are herdsmen and woodland deities. The time is in 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 227 

harmony with the surroundings, carrying the hearer back to 
the uncertain epoch of mythological tales. 

Aminta opens with a prologue, which dedicates the play 
to the god of love. Then Cupid, who has escaped from 
his mother, Venus, appears in the disguise of a shepherd. 
From his lines we learn that he is about to direct his arrows 
against Sylvia, a nymph of Diana's train, who is treating 
with scorn the suit of the shepherd Amyntas. Now the 
story proper begins with a dialogue on love between Sylvia 
and her friend Daphne. This is followed by an eclogue, 
in which the singer Thyrsis endeavors to console Amyntas 
for Sylvia's disdain. But the sorrowful shepherd refuses to 
be comforted. On the contrary he excites his own desires 
with the remembrance of Sylvia's charms, and relates the 
stratagem he had used to approach her — which is the story 
of the bee, borrowed by Tasso from Achilles Tatius. Up 
to this point all has been in keeping with the assumed rus- 
ticity of the times. But suddenly the author breaks in upon 
this simplicity by contemporaneous allusions. In bitter 
terms he condemns the vices which town life is supposed to 
breed, and discloses the true sentiment of his work in a beau- 
tiful chorus on the innocence and happiness of the Age 
of Gold. 

The second act transports us back again into the fabled 
past. A satyr appears, who plots before our eyes the 
abduction of Sylvia. Then Amyntas' friends arrive and 
propose to betray Sylvia to him, while she is bathing in 
the fountain — a situation already exploited in the Ninfale 
Fiesolano. But Amyntas, who is filled with the true idea of 
love, refuses to do violence to the mistress of his heart, and 
the chorus seconds him, in a song on the power of the ten- 
der passion. The action is ripening rapidly into a tragedy. 
Thyrsis and the chorus hold the stage. The former tells 
his sympathetic listeners how the satyr had caught Sylvia 
and how Amyntas had bravely rescued her from him. Yet 



228 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

this act of devotion has not won her affection. The 
ungrateful nymph flies from her generous deliverer, and in 
despair Amyntas attempts his own life. But a new situation 
is developed which seems to be another loan from the 
Greek novels. Sylvia is supposed to have fallen a prey to 
wolves, and portions of her dress are offered on the stage 
as evidences of her death. At this, Amyntas, who has been 
restrained from suicide, disappears, and the nymph returns 
to the scene to explain the error into which the shepherds 
had fallen regarding her. While they are talking a mes- 
senger arrives, who tells them that Amyntas has evaded his 
friends and has thrown himself from a high cliff — like so 
many heroes of the Greek elegiac poetry. Then pity softens 
the hard heart of the terrified nymph. She hastens to find the 
corpse of her lover, and to give it a fitting burial, but on 
reaching the foot of the cliff she sees that breath is still in 
the body. Overhanging bushes have broken the force of 
the fall, and, in the arms of his beloved, Amyntas comes to 
life again. 

Aminta was played before the nobilty of Ferrara exactly 
one hundred years after the production of Orfeo in Flor- 
ence. During that long period of time no other pastoral 
drama of note had been written in Italy, though the stage 
had been flooded with many second-rate productions. 
These inferior plays, however, had done their work in keep- 
ing alive the taste for rural scenes ; and in the process of 
their development they had become by degrees more like 
their original model, the Ninfale Fiesolano. So we are 
obliged to account for the unbounded enthusiasm which 
greeted Tasso's dramatic poem on the ground of the excel- 
lence of its style and composition, rather than on the suppo- 
sition that its sentiments were in any way a novelty. To be 
sure the author mars constantly the peace of his rustic sur- 
roundings by the bitterness and cynicism of his references 
to the court which sheltered him, and to the vices of his 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 229 

contemporaries. Yet this manner of procedure was well 
calculated to excite the curiosity of his frivolous public. 
For by openly violating the assumed time of Aminta* s plot 
he showed to the gossips that its whole setting was but 
superficial, and thus led them to the necessary conclusion 
that his shepherds and nymphs might be persons of their 
own acquaintance in disguise. The story would then have 
a key and be assured of success from the start. 

It is in the perfection of his verse and in the adapta- 
tion of his material that Tasso has retained the admiration 
of posterity. He borrows freely from the ancients, though 
less literally than did Sannazaro. In the prologue to Aminta 
he follows Theocritus. In the main body of the poem Vir- 
gil is often in his thoughts, and is openly imitated in the 
lines where Tasso praises his patron in the manner of the 
Roman poet's first Eclogue. Ovid also, and the minor lyric 
and pastoral writers of Greece, come in for their share of 
influence, as well as the Greek novelist whom we have 
already mentioned, and even the Italian Ariosto. The 
characters of the play are the traditional ones, and the hero 
is still the despairing lover, who pours out his sorrows in 
song, and cuts the name of his mistress on the bark of 
friendly sighing trees. Still the accessories of pastoral 
existence are almost wholly absent in Aminta. The grazing 
flocks are far away from the scene of action, and instead of 
the cooling shades of noon, which bend to hear the tender 
lament of the unfortunate lover, we are startled in the gloomy 
forest by the mad rush of feverish passions, the barbarous 
wooing of the satyr, or the exalted melancholy of the re- 
jected shepherd. Sylvia's harshness toward her suitors 
was not new to ancient or mediaeval literature, but was the 
disdain of the nymphs of Greece. The revival of the tra- 
dition of antiquity had affected the demeanor of many 
heroines before Tasso's time, yet it was a novelty in fiction 
that this trait of the maiden should be made so prominent 



230 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

in the development of the plot. The predecessors of Tasso 
in pastoral drama had either caused the nymph to be in 
love from the beginning, or at least to yield after prolonged 
entreaty. In the Arcadia the lover did not give up hope so 
long as his mistress lived. In Aminta % however, the con- 
ception derived from the ancients of a mortal who is proof 
against Venus' power, is repeated in its entirety. The stress 
which Tasso laid on this characteristic is unmistakable, and 
it is undoubtedly to his delineation rather than to the por- 
traits of the other repellent maidens of Renaissance fiction 
that the French novelists of the seventeenth century owe 
the frigidity of their glacial heroines. 

Through the Astree and, in real life, through the blue- 
stockings of the Hotel de Rambouillet, Tasso's attitude of 
the mistress to the lover was handed down to the present 
day. Amyntas is the lovelorn hero of many a society novel 
during the last three centuries, always despairing, always 
looking on suicide with a longing eye ; and the romantic 
movement in literature, which proved so fatal to the reign 
of Sylvia, multiplied his race to such an alarming extent 
that the reverberation of the sighs and groans which the 
shores of the ^Egean re-echoed to the banks of the Arno 
has not yet died away over the waters of Lake Leman or 
the islands of Windermere. 

One more example of the Italian dramatic pastoral 
remains to be noticed before this chapter can be brought to 
an end. It is Guarini's Pastor Fide, which in no sense is so 
important a work in the history of literature as Aminta. In 
fact it was inspired by the latter play, and the object of its 
composition — later by a decade than its model — was to rival 
Tasso on his own chosen ground. Consequently in the 
Pastor Fido we meet with the same general trend of events 
as in the earlier poem, and with imitation in verse we find 
a considerable imitation in expressions and sentiments. In 
his choice of the place of action for his story, Guarini 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 23 1 

returns to the opinion of Sannazaro and revives the scenery 
of Arcadia of the Peloponnesus. His prologue, a eulogy 
of his patrons, he puts in the mouth of the river god, 
Alpheus. His plot he borrows, with change of names, from 
that supply of erotic tales which Pausanias never tired of 
telling, and so adapts to the taste of his Italian audience the 
old Greek story of Coresus and Callirrhoe. 

The priest of Diana, Amyntas by name, loves the nymph 
Lucrina. But his love is scorned, and in answer to the 
prayers of her servant the goddess sends a pestilence to 
ravage the country. The inhabitants demand from an 
oracle the means of staying the plague, and are told that to 
accomplish it Lucrina must first be sacrificed. Accordingly 
she is brought as a victim to Diana's altar, where Amyntas 
officiates as priest. But her lover, true to his passion for 
her, kills himself rather than shed her blood, and she, 
repenting too late of her hardheartedness toward him, 
pierces her own bosom with the very dagger which had 
taken the life of her suitor. The blood shed at her shrine 
once more arouses Diana's wrath, and the oracle, again con- 
sulted, demands an annual human sacrifice of a virgin. 
This grievous burden may be removed only when two 
heavenly races have become united, and a faithful shepherd 
atones for the faithless nymph. To bring about this result 
the wise men of the land betroth Sylvio, a descendant of 
Hercules, to Amaryllis, of the race of Pan, but each un- 
willingly. For the shepherd, who is the counterpart of 
Tasso's Sylvia, scorns all love as unworthy of a man's 
attention, and Amaryllis is already in love with Myrtillo, 
and is beloved by him in return. 

So much for the principal plot of the Pastor Fido. At 
this point, however, the first story is complicated by the in- 
troduction of another, which the author interweaves with his 
main narrative. Corisca, wooed by a satyr whom she 
abhors, and whom she finally lures to his death, is en- 



232 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

amored of Myrtillo, and consequently is filled with hatred 
toward Amaryllis. She tries to compass that maiden's 
destruction by raising against her the charge of faithless- 
ness. Amaryllis does indeed fall into the snare, and is 
condemned to execution. Already at the altar, Myrtillo 
hears of her peril and hastens to offer himself as her sub- 
stitute. Montano, who is both the priest of Diana and the 
father of Sylvio, is on the point of accepting Myrtillo's 
sacrifice, in spite of many inward misgivings, when an 
unknown shepherd appears on the scene to delay the cere- 
mony. This stranger tells how he had found Myrtillo, 
when but an infant, on the banks of a stream which had 
overflowed its bed. With the child were tokens of his 
ancestry and rank, and these the shepherd brings with him. 
By means of them Montano recognizes in Myrtillo the lost 
brother of Sylvio, and his own son. So the justice of the 
oracle is proven. Myrtillo is united to the vindicated 
Amaryllis, Sylvio allows himself to be touched at last by 
the devotion of Dorinda — who through love of him had 
disguised herself in a wolf's skin, and had been wounded 
by him on a hunt — while Corisca is disposed of by a simple 
disappearance. 

The chief feature which distinguishes Guarini's drama 
from the plays of his predecessors is the intricacy of its plot. 
The wheel within a wheel was something new to pastoral 
fiction. The action also of the Pastor Fido, in spite of 
many allusions to the fickleness of woman, and particularly 
of the city-bred, is also to be preferred to the action of 
Aminta, which is not so faithful to the assumption of a 
pastoral existence. In these respects Guarini's play is more 
dramatic than the simple and emotional poem of Tasso. 
But in other things the Pastor Fido reveals an author of 
inferior talent. A good share of its episodes are not 
original, but are openly imitated from the scenes of Aminta. 
In its choruses, especially the one on the delightsW kissing, 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 233 

and another extolling the Age of Gold, the sentiments of 
Tasso are merely repeated without variation. Guarini's 
originality mainly consists in the minor ornaments of his 
style, such as proverbs, conceits, refrains, and the celebrated 
echo verse, a forerunner of which may be found in Orfeo. 
In his descriptions of shepherd's games and the sports of 
the nymphs, he approaches again the genuine pastoral idea 
which Tasso had abandoned somewhat ; and yet, when all 
has been said regarding his poem, and when its merits and 
defects have been balanced from the pastoral point of view, 
we must admit that the success of the Pastor Fido was due 
to its voluptuous imagery, its sensuous coloring, and the" 
softness of its rhythm, rather than to the excellences of 
its plot or action. In his exposition of Arcadian surround- 
ings Guarini violated the very principles of simplicity and 
directness, on which the idea of pastoral composition was 
founded. Those qualities which have given him his place in 
literature were fatal to the conception of the very kind of 
writing which he cultivated, and were so many elements of 
decay in the life of the school. In fact, after Guarini, the 
pastoral drama, which had held so high a place in the Italy of 
the Renaissance, produced no work of prominence. Pastoral 
composition was continued, to be sure, and even swamped 
by its popularity the legitimate drama. The disguise of 
shepherds and shepherdesses invaded, as we have seen, all 
the literary life of the people, and became a leading trait of 
their operas and academies. But real development of the 
pastoral in Italy stopped short with the Pastor Fido, and its 
further progress must be traced on foreign soil, in the 
dramas of the early seventeenth century in France and in 
the episodes of the renowned Astr/e, to which Guarini's 
poem contributed its quota of inspiration. 

Yet it would hardly be fair to Italian pastorals as a 
whole, taking together the narrative and the dramatic, to 
say that they remained without direct imitations of a novel- 



234 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

istic character. For in France particularly, they did not 
fail to incite to literary compositions, made up in great part 
of prose, to be sure, yet containing numerous poems also. 
Such productions, which took their form from Ameto or the 
Arcadia, but admitted in addition the notions of Aminta or 
the Pastor Fido, fell little short of being genuine novels 
with a plot and a solution. It is true that these attempts 
at romancing do not seem to have ever been popular with 
the reading public, and nowadays they are recalled only as 
literary curiosities. The best example of them, beyond all 
doubt, is Les Bergeries de Juliette, by Ollenix du Montsacre, a 
pseudonym for the French dramatist, Nicolas de Montreux, 
who is the author also of the sixteenth book of the French 
Amadis. The work is divided into five volumes, which 
were published at intervals from 1585 to 1598. The first 
two volumes of the five appear to have met with consider- 
able favor, and attained the honor of several editions, but 
the remaining three evidently fell flat from the very outset. 
The author indicates the plan of his novel in the sub-title of 
the first volume, so to cite his words is to give the best idea 
of the contents of the pastoral : " In which through the 
loves of shepherds and shepherdesses one sees the different 
effects of love, with five jocose stories told in five days by 
five shepherdesses, and several echos, enigmas, sonnets, 
elegies, and stanzas. Together with a pastoral in French 
verse, in imitation of the Italians." 

This new combination of various devices to attract all 
sorts of clients includes the realistic matter of the Decam- 
eron, with its framework, and the ideal divagations of the 
pastoral muse. But the setting is wholly rural. The action 
takes place in Arcadia, where dwelt the herdsman Phyllis, 
his sister Juliette, and eight other shepherds. In this prim- 
itive society of ten love ran rampant. Each loved someone 
who did not love him, but who loved someone else, and so 
on until the circuit was complete. The usual assemblies, 



THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 235 

were held, with which we are now familiar, the audience was 
entertained at them with stories and songs, while the flows 
of soul were broken in upon by the evil-minded satyrs, who 
rushed from their hiding-places in the groves to steal away 
the kindly nymphs. But in Les Bergeries de Juliette the 
satyrs are not so successful as in the Italian pastorals, and 
the shepherds, who are enamored of their fair entertainers, 
drive the unwelcome suitors back to their dens. The stories 
told in these reunions are not of the most elevating charac- 
ter, nor the most refined in sentiment, but they know no 
geographical limits, reaching from Spain to Poland, and are 
re-enforced at times with the performance of magic arts, a 
trait Nicolas may have borrowed from Spanish fiction. The 
only character of prominence, Juliette, is a duplicate of the 
heroines of Tasso and Guarini. Her cooling attitude toward 
the ardent supplications of her admirers never fails to have 
an effect opposite to the natural process, raising the temper- 
ature of their affections rather than lowering it. 

There is, however, nothing in this work to call for partic- 
ular comment. The author himself was aware of some of 
his shortcomings, and declares in the last volume he pub- 
lished that he will write sequels which shall excel in piety 
what he had written, though not in poetry or invention. 
But this promise was not fulfilled. No further addition to 
Les Bergeries de Juliette was made, and the absence of a solu- 
tion to the plot of the story makes what we have before us 
resemble rather a succession of scenes than an unfinished 
novel. Nicolas did not have sufficient talent to mold his 
material toward the end he desired. His models did not 
help him at all, inasmuch as those among them which were 
partly in prose did not aim at the same end he did. They 
were content in being purely artistic episodes, without 
demanding the least connection or progressive development. 
The pastoral novels of the seventeenth century were not to 
look for a model to these Italian predecessors. When, ten 



236 THE ITALIAN PASTORAL. 

years after Nicolas de Montreux had ceased to publish, 
Honore D'Urfe tried his hand at pastoral fiction, it was not 
the dramas and eclogues of Italy which inspired his pen. 
For the construction of the Astree he chose rather the exam- 
ple of a genuine novel in prose and verse, regular in plan, 
and consonant in tone, which half a century before his day 
had received its completed form from the more exacting 
romancers of the Spanish peninsula. 



HaM 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

Spain of the sixteenth century gave birth to the pastoral 
novel, as Spain of the fifteenth had done to the romance of 
chivalry. So much is conceded on all sides. But whether 
Spain originated the' pastoral-navel or imitated it, with some 
improvements in the way of construction, from her Latin 
neighbor to the eastward, is still a mooted question in literary 
history. At first sight the arguments seem to be all in her 
favor. She invented beyond dispute the novel of chivalry 
half a century before the pastoral novel appeared, and just 
as unmistakably did she fashion the picaresco novel, the 
pastoral's contemporary. Possessing the genius for creating 
this style of fiction, and, indeed, endowed with it peculiarly, 
when compared to the incomplete talents of the other lands 
of modern Europe, all the weight of analogy would incline 
the balance to the side of Spain in the matter of the pastoral 
novel also. Still we must remember that in the case of the 
romance of chivalry there was abundant testimony to the 
previous life and popularity, with the Portuguese and the 
Spaniards, of the embryonic Amadis of Gaul. And so far as 
the picaresco novel is concerned, while it lacks any known 
antecedents in the peninsula — or elsewhere for that matter 
— its whole spirit and scene is thoroughly and entirely 
Spanish. 

With the pastoral novel, however, the evidence is not so 
clear. Italy had far outshone, with Boccaccio, Poliziano, 
and Sannazaro, all other countries in the cultivation of this 
branch of fiction, and the glory of Ameto and the Arcadia had 

237 



238 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

eclipsed all faint gleams of the pastoral idea which had 
appeared here and there in the literature of the remaining 
Latin peoples. So when Montemayor gave out his Diana, 
toward the middle of the sixteenth century, it was assumed 
at once that such a brilliant production, appearing without 
any notable predecessors in its own vernacular, must neces- 
sarily have been prompted by the great Arcadia and pat- 
terned after it. Bat the setting of Diana is Spanish, its 
tone and customs are Spanish, and there is nothing in its 
contents which would testify to a loan from foreign sources. 
The great contrast between the two works of the Italian 
writer and the Portuguese would suggest another explana- 
tion for the Dianas existence ; and when it is studied by 
itself, without any mental reservations, it appears entirely 
indigenous to the Iberian peninsula. If then it can be 
shown that antecedent to the Diana there was in its home 
any local cultivation of the pastoral either in poetry or 
prose, however humble and infrequent, the likelihood would 
be that the Diana is the outgrowth, in the main, of these 
obscure beginnings. And, to go one step further, if it 
appears that this literary fancy had enjoyed any considera- 
ble popularity, and its current could be followed for any 
length of time down the stream of national production until 
it was strong enough to sustain the burden of a great work, 
then it would be admissible to claim that the existence of 
the Diana could be explained sufficiently from the circum- 
stances surrounding it in its own fatherland. 

While occasional specimens of pastoral composition are 
to be found in Castilian and Portuguese poetry back to the 
Middle Ages, no connected line of works is seen until Fer- 
dinand and Isabella had strengthened their throne by the 
expulsion of the Moors and the discovery of America. The 
romance of chivalry had already lived its life among the 
people, and under the revision of Montalvo had just risen 
to favor with the nobility. Peace had been secured from 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 239 

domestic foes, and the mind of the nation, wearied with the 
long discords and fond of the herdsman's life, was ready to 
turn aside from the martial strains of ballad poetry to the 
quiet pipings of the shepherd's muse. The period of military 
glory had not passed by any means, for the Empire was 
about to begin, but still the time had come when other lit- 
erary themes could be introduced in the place hitherto held 
exclusively by the warlike. And it would seem as though 
the reign of Charles V. witnessed the evolution of the pas- 
toral novel, very much as the religious wars of the preceding 
centuries had fostered the development of the romance of 
chivalry. 

For ideas foreign to the territory of Spain and Portugal 
were always welcome there, and often received the rights 
of citizenship on the banks of the Douro and Tagus. So the 
likeness in the formation of the pastoral novel and the 
romance of chivalry does not stop with the adaptation of 
their respective contents to a new locality and an alien race. 
Both nations of the peninsula worked together in the pro- 
duction of the pastoral, as they had done in the evolution 
of the romance, and each of them must be credited with the 
honor arising from its labors, share and share alike. Or 
rather, as the Spaniard has won the greater praise in the 
romance of chivalry, so the Portuguese must be accorded the 
chief glory in the shaping of the pastoral. Amadis of Gaul> 
whatever its antecedents, came into literature in the Spanish 
tongue and fathered by a Spanish noble. But the author of 
Diana, though using in his work the more widespread idiom 
of the peninsula, was by birth a Portuguese, and his most 
important forerunners could lay claim to the same ancestry. 
However, there is no call for any exact differentiation between 
the two nations at the time of the Renaissance, since in all 
literary matters, and in their sensitiveness to outside influ- 
ences of style and thought, they acted as one people, and 
their authors wrote indifferently in either tongue. 



240 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

But in following out the path of the pastoral in Spain and 
Portugal our task is not by any means so simple as it was 
in exploring the ways of the romance of chivalry. The 
material for the pastoral came from more than one source, 
and though these sources can be roughly located, as spring- 
ing from Roman literature, from Italian, and from the indig- 
enous poetry of the peninsula, yet to define more exactly 
the contributions of each to the resulting product is a most 
difficult matter, and one to which the present knowledge of the 
subject is certainly inadequate. The bucolic poetry of the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, both in Latin and in the 
vernacular, still awaits the investigation of modern scholars. 
Consequently it is too early to pretend to write the final 
history of the evolution of the modern pastoral novel, and 
the pages which follow are to be taken as indications, plau- 
sible but not assured, of the way in which that evolution 
may have taken place. 

The first definite appearance of pastoral poetry in the 
literature of the peninsula was at the court of the Portu- 
guese king, Diniz. There pastourelles, in the manner of 
France and Provence, were cultivated by the native poets, 
and very likely may have become thoroughly acclimated. 
In Spain proper, however, there is very little evidence of 
the presence of bucolic verse. The influence of Provencal 
lyric during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and 
particularly in the provinces of Aragon, Catalonia, and 
Valencia, led to the imitation of the rural poetry of Prov- 
ence, as the writings of the Marquis of Santillana clearly 
prove. But whether this foreign fashion awoke any native 
sentiment among the more popular poets, or whether the 
Provencal strophic form was imitated because it afforded 
a more polished framework for indigenous material, we have 
at present no means of ascertaining. It is known, however, 
that the economic conditions of the country would of them- 
selves naturally conduce to the popularity of pastoral sub- 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 24 1 

jects, and did, in fact, guide the steps of the rising drama, 
whatever may have been its effects on lyric verse. 

For Spain was always a land of flocks and herds, and 
remained an agricultural community long after the cities in 
the other parts of western Europe had inclined the indus- 
trial balance of their nations in favor of the artisans. The 
larger towns in Spain were under the control of the Moors 
until a comparatively late date, so the population of the 
North was divided between warriors and shepherds, for its 
two largest classes. When the drama arose under the 
auspices of the Church, and developed out of the sacred 
liturgy its mysteries and miracles, the people of Spain 
strongly favored the cultivation of a kind of religious play 
which appears hardly at all in the mediaeval drama of the 
other Romance nations. And it was under the influence of 
the national industry that the Christmas auto came into 
being. The visit of the shepherds of Judea to the manger 
at Bethlehem was an especially pleasing subject for the hus- 
bandmen of the Spanish tablelands? and as a result the auto 
multiplied itself in Spanish literature. Scarcely a poet 
wrote, during the Renaissance, who did not attempt to win 
the applause of the multitude by the production of these 
cherished scenes. And when the strictly liturgical charac- 
ter of the play yielded to the encroachments of the secular 
theater, the pastoral disguise of the original actors coincided 
no less with the taste and demands of the same public 
they had interested in their first surroundings. Besides, 
there is not much doubt that the example of the Latin 
eclogue confirmed, among the educated classes, this natural 
inclination of the people. 

In this way the ground was unusually well prepared for 
the reception of the pastoral narrative, while its growth was 
further favored by the previous expansion of the secular pas- 
toral drama, or eclogue. As early as the year 1472, when 
Montalvo was giving to Amadis its final revision, the seeds 



242 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

of its later rival were already bearing fruit in a series of 
strophes in dialogue form, which are known to literary his- 
tory as Las Coplas de Mingo Revulgo. Their subject was 
anything but pastoral, a genuine satire on the evils of the 
times, when the country was being wasted by the civil strife 
which the feeble king, Henry IV., allowed to go on un- 
checked. But the actors who carry on the dialogue are 
two shepherds, one of whom, Mingo Revulgo himself, per- 
sonifies the common people. The piece is, therefore, an 
eclogue in appearance, probably suggested by the Christmas 
autos. At all events, it became a great favorite with the 
Spaniards, and its success lasted well into the following 
century. 

Some twenty-five years later than the anonymous Mhigo 
Revulgo, a Spanish poet, known to fame, who had been 
a student at the great University of Salamanca, and who 
became afterward the celebrated chapel-master of Pope 
Leo X., Juan de la Encina by name, produced an entire 
set of dramatic eclogues. They were of both types, sacred, 
after the style of the Chrismas autos, and profane, in the 
manner of the Italian school. Among the latter there is 
one which seems unmistakably patterned on a French 
pastourelle. It contains the traditional village scenes, alle- 
gorical allusions and descriptions, all of which are por- 
trayed in the acting and conversation of shepherds, both in 
leading and subordinate parts. More significant is a dra- 
matic pastoral of Encina's, after the Italian style, and no 
doubt inspired by a Latin or Italian original, though it was 
written in 1497, before pastoral dramas had advanced very 
far in Italy. The story is simple, and tells how the shep- 
herd, Fileno, confides to two friends his love for Zafira and 
her rejection of his suit. It concludes with the suicide of 
the melancholy hero. 

Encina was fond also of translating Virgil's Bucolics, and 
the use of classical names for his actors, even in pastoral 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 243 

inventions of his own, points quite clearly to the source of 
his conception. With his successors foreign influence pre- 
vails in a steadily increasing degree. The second and third 
decades of the sixteenth century saw the literary career of 
the great poet Garcilaso de la Vega, an acknowledged ad- 
mirer and disciple of the ancients and one of the most ardent 
supporters of the revival of learning. It was Garcilaso 
who called the attention of his countrymen to the excellence 
in form of Italian poetical work, and started the new school 
of lyric poetry in Spain. His own individual writing was 
not extensive, though excellent in quality and important in 
its bearing. About one-half of it was made up of three 
eclogues, rather lyric than dramatic in nature, the content of 
which discloses on the part of Garcilaso a great admiration 
for Virgil, Horace, and the Italian Sannazaro. But the 
most interesting feature about them is that the three poems 
are clearly based on facts of personal experience, and 
present so many episodes taken from the life of the poet. 
Their setting is Spanish, the names of their characters are 
anagrams or suggestions of living Spaniards, and one of the 
princely families of Spain is directly eulogized in them. 

Whatever then may have been the influence of the pasto- 
rals of Latin antiquity or of the style of the Arcadia, it is 
beyond dispute that the chief element here is local and 
Spanish, and that the purpose is to pteice thejwriter and his 
friends before our eyes in pastoral disguise. We find, there- 
fore, in these lyrical narratives of Garcilaso that fusion of 
indigenous and extraneous material — the former furnishing 
the story and the latter the ornamentation, the substance 
original, the form borrowed — which would appear to be 
the embryo of the pastoral novel in Spain. If this con- 
jecture be true, the poems of Garcilaso take on an im- 
portance in literary history which has not heretofore been 
assigned to them. 

The story which the first poem tells runs after this man- 



tm 



244 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

ner : On the banks of the Tagus a shepherd, Salicio (ana- 
gram of Garcilaso), is seen complaining to his friend, 
Nemoroso (who is probably the poet Boscan), of the cold- 
ness of his mistress. And such was the grief excited by the 
recollection of these woes that at the end Salicio expires 
from unrequited love, and leaves Nemoroso behind to close 
the eclogue with a lamentation over the loss of his own 
beloved, Elisa. The second poem is much longer and more 
detailed. It opens with a description of the surroundings 
of the action, which takes place near a fountain beneath 
the trees — the conventional scenery. Next is introduced 
the hero, Albanio, a truly melancholy shepherd, who pro- 
ceeds first to recall his woes in verse and afterward to for- 
get them in the oblivion of sleep. But soon the song of the 
shepherd Salicio awakens him to his grief again, and in the 
midst of a fresh outburst of lamentations he tells the story 
of his sorrows to the newcomer : One day when Albanio 
was resting from the fatigues of the hunt, in company with 
a nymph of Diana's train, he was besought by her to dis- 
close the face of his heart's love. He pretends to comply 
with her request, and bids her look for the features of his 
mistress in the waters of the neighboring fountain. Unsus- 
pecting, she follows his directions, and the calm surface 
returns to her the reflection of her own countenance. She 
understands at once the mystery, and in shame and confu- 
sion flees away. This is Albanio's story. Salicio, in pity, 
now tries to comfort the deserted lover, and the two finally 
leave the scene. 

No sooner are they out of hearing than the nymph who 
has occasioned all this suffering, Camilla by name, arrives 
at the fountain. She has no confidant, and must fain solil- 
oquize. So in her monologue she declares that she truly 
loves Albanio, but yet desires to keep the vows she had 
made when she entered the service of Diana. At last she 
also falls asleep in the midst of her perplexity, and is dis- 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 245 

covered in that condition by Albanio on his return. His 
joy at seeing her again is cut short, however, by the 
approach of Salicio and Nemoroso. In his vexation he falls 
on these unwelcome friends most valiantly. The strife 
arouses Camilla, who disappears. Now the poet, using 
Nemoroso as his spokesman, runs off into a long eulogy of 
a country-seat by the river Tormes, and the family of Alva — 
a digression which became the fashion in the later pastoral 
novels. So the device, which Garcilaso employs here, of 
an urn adorned with the portraits of the famous men of the 
time, and bearing inscriptions recounting their mighty deeds, 
was also much used in subsequent pastoral literature. The 
eulogy ends the second eclogue. The third eclogue is 
unimportant. It describes a vale of the Tagus, and cele- 
brates a nymph who dwelt there. A poetical tournament 
between two shepherds concludes the series. 

Whether the notions which Garcilaso has expressed in 
these three poems were original with him, or whether they 
were borrowed from native or foreign predecessors, the fact 
remains that a generation previous to the appearance of 
Diana, the most popular poet of his age had outlined in 
Spain all the essential features of the pastoral novel. There 
are hints in his eclogues of the dramatic pastoral, such as 
Boccaccio cultivated, and they contain conceptions which 
very likely were prompted by the love legends of antiquity. 
And in his own participation in disguise in the action of his 
story, Garcilaso may have been guided by the example of 
Sannazaro in the Arcadia. Yet, when all concessions have 
been made to the foreign influence in his work, we must still 
admit that the Spanish poet showed a great advance over 
his supposed models in other literatures. In the matter of 
scenery he was not affected by them at all, but chose 
deliberately, in the very face of the Arcadian fashion of his 
day, the banks and valleys of Spanish rivers. As regards the 
time of his action, he coincides somewhat with the ideas of 



246 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

Sannazaro, making it half-mythological by the presence 
of nymphs, and half-actual by the anagrams of his actors. 
His eulogy, however, of living men inclined the balance of 
sentiment to the side of modern feeling, while by citing the 
names of their patrons he revealed so plainly the identity of 
his fictitious shepherds, that the slight dose of mythology in 
the story must have seemed to his contemporaries an inar- 
tistic anachronism. Other elements of the traditional pas- 
toral he seems to have disregarded entirely, notwithstanding 
the opposite trend of the Italian writers, and by dwelling, 
without digressive episodes, so strongly as he does on true 
emotion, he carried the probability of his plot to the verge 
of the narration of true events. In other words, time and 
place were almost entirely modernized in the eclogues of 
our poet, and required no further handling to be prepared 
for the appearance of the pastoral novel. The idea of 
selecting episodes from the life of the author and his 
acquaintances was not new, of course, but Garcilaso, by 
localizing it in well-known Spanish scenery, must have con- 
tributed very much to its popularity and future adaptability. 
After his eclogues a developed plot and a prose form alone 
were needed in order to produce a genuine pastoral romance. 
Garcilaso's influence was not confined to subsequent 
Spanish literature only. The educated classes of Portugal, 
who were familiar with the language of their neighbors 
equally with their own vernacular, came under the charm of 
his verse, and acknowledged his authority as leader of the 
new Renaissance school of poetry. And besides this recep- 
tion by the literary class, his eclogues, though lyric in their 
essence, almost elegies indeed, were considered as fair game 
by the wandering troops of actors which were beginning to 
overrun the peninsula, and through them found access to 
the popular theater. Thus their dramatic side was empha- 
sized. In this way they were kept before the minds of the 
public, and by their popularity they were made the starting- 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 247 

point for a whole series of pastoral plays, which in their 
turn prolonged and extended Garcilaso's conception of pas- 
toral composition. How many obscure and nameless poets 
became his imitators is not recorded, but among the authors 
whose merits have handed down their writings to posterity, 
there may be found some who seem to have received from 
him their inspiration for pastoral literature. 

Among such admirers of Garcilaso we may probably 
count his relative, Francesco de Sa de Miranda, a native of 
Portugal. It is possible, to be sure, that this brilliant writer 
obtained many of his views of pastoral poetry directly from 
Italian sources, since he visited Italy between the years 
1521 and 1526. If so, his resemblance then to Garcilaso is 
merely accidental. Yet the ties of blood which held the 
two poets together, and the popularity of the Spanish writer 
throughout the whole peninsula, make the theory of Miran- 
da's relationship to him in literature, as well as in family, 
the more plausible one. At all events the Portuguese 
author employed the same method in the treatment of his 
subject that Garcilaso had used, and gave to the material 
which he selected, and to the Italian forms of versification 
he had borrowed, the same vividness of local coloring and the 
same realistic basis in nature. Many of Miranda's eclogues 
are arranged as dialogues, and contain nothing which 
need be here mentioned as in any way distinctive. But the 
first poetical narrative which came from his pen is interest- 
ing for many reasons. It is is told in the first person, and 
is called The Story of the Mondego, written in the winter of 
1527-28. 

The theme is the love affair of an orphan, Diego, who 
lived on the banks of the river Munda. One day, as Diego 
was returning from the chase, he heard near at hand the 
voice of a nymph who dwelt in the plain between the river 
and the mountain. He advanced toward the voice and 
descried the maiden, whose appearance and attire were most 



248 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

attractive. Her song was on the birth of Diana and Apollo. 
But as the hunter approaches she becomes aware of the 
gaze of mortal eyes, and in confusion vanishes, to be seen 
no more. Her flight, however, comes too late for the peace 
of Diego, for already had the arrows of love transfixed his 
breast. After seeking in vain for the nymph, he takes the 
hills and groves into his confidence, and pours into their 
sympathetic bosom the words of his lamentations. Though 
a victim to the god of love, he celebrates his power as it 
was revealed of old in the life of Orpheus, and when con- 
solation delays to come he yields to his passion's consum- 
ing flame, pines away, and dies. Now his neighbors who 
had tried to comfort him in his grief give his lifeless body 
burial by the side of the stream, which they ever after call 
Mondego in remembrance of him. And they placed on his 
tombstone an epitaph, which told the passer-by of the might 
of love and the sorrow of nature at the death of the youth- 
ful hunter. 

The general trend of this poem is clearly like the course of 
Boccaccio's pastorals, and it may be even considered a less 
tragic Niiifale Fiesolano. The elaborate description of the 
nymph's figure and dress reminds one also of the fondness 
of the Italian author for such delineations. So we cannot 
say that in its contents Miranda's eclogue marks any advance 
toward the later novel. But in his style and in the acces- 
sories of his story the Portuguese poet contributed no incon- 
siderable share to the reality of pastoral pictures. He was 
not content with the repetition of the conventional phrases 
on the beauties of nature and the charms of country scenery. 
He is modern and his sketches are living. His grass is thick 
and growing, his meadows are strewn with flowers of many 
hues, and in the background of his landscapes are grazing 
the fleeciest flocks in all Portugal. Miranda loved nature 
for herself, and his hero found in her a friend who could 
soothe his sadness. His love for her vitalized the touches 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 249 

with which he expressed his delight in her charms — a trait 
we are too often inclined to limit to the writers of the more 
modern romantic school — and in the Story of the Mondego 
there is that renewal of natural vigor, which is always felt 
when an ideal conception descends to refresh itself by con- 
tact with its real substance. Nature is now valued for the 
pleasure she can give to sentient man, and no longer for the 
literary uses to which she may be artificially adapted. After 
Miranda had provided a genuine rural setting for pastoral 
things, the task of subsequent authors would be to place 
within that frame the expression of personal emotions and 
real desires. This work the writers of Portugal successfully 
performed, and by their narratives of actual human experi- 
ence attained the end for which the more artistic Italians 
had vainly striven. They founded indeed the pastoral 
novel. 

It was a friend of Sa de Miranda who first united these 
two essentials of a living pastoral composition. He was 
also a Portuguese, but, unlike his associate, chose his mother 
tongue for his literary language. His name was Bernardim 
Ribeiro, was born about i486, and lived until, perhaps, 
1554, being thus Miranda's senior by some years, and his 
contemporary as well. Ribeiro, like the other literary men 
of his time, tried his hand at lyrics and eclogues. It can- 
not be claimed that he was at first influenced by his com- 
patriot, for he had composed some poems before Miranda 
had proved his own talent. But it cannot be questioned 
that the two exercised a mutual control over each other, and 
quickened their mutual inspiration. Ribeiro came also 
under the same literary influences as the other poets of the 
age. The Italian pastorals no doubt furnished him with 
many suggestions, both for the style and the composition of 
his work, while the bucolics of Virgil and the poems of 
Garcilaso are not to be left out of account, in a study of this 
Portuguese author. Besides he may have come intosympa- 



250 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

thetic contact with the ideas of Provencal poetry, which 
were now dying away before the oncoming of the Renais- 
sance standards of taste. Yet whatever may be his indebt- 
edness to all these sources for inspiration or material, it is 
not open to much doubt that the foundation of Ribeiro's 
pastoral writings is the same as the one which supported the 
eclogues of Juan de la Encina, for in the case of both the 
secular autos of the popular theater seem to have shaped 
their literary career. Other influences, to be sure, came in, 
but mainly for the bettering of their style and the dramatic 
development of their episodes. 

In keeping with the theory of Ribeiro's dependence on 
the auto, we find that his first eclogue is a dialogue between 
two shepherds on the subject of love. The one who is 
ignorant of that passion gives a deal of sound moral advice 
to the other, a lover, disconsolate because his mistress had 
married a richer swain. In this little scene it is possible we 
may have the echo of an event in the life of the author him- 
self, for in the poem following an episode of personal expe- 
rience is certainly the theme. He there tells how a shep- 
herd, Jano, disregarded the warnings of an older comrade, 
and, at the age of twenty-one, left his rural peace for the 
turmoil of court life. Soon he falls in love with a shep- 
herdess, Joanna by name, of noble birth, in which 
hopeless attachment he perseveres in spite of the knowl- 
edge that it is hopeless, and notwithstanding the lessons 
taught by a previous unlucky affair of the heart. But a 
relief is at last found for him in the sympathetic breast of 
another shepherd, Franco de Sandovir, the anagram for 
Francisco de Sa de Miranda. 

Other eclogues later in date provide this story with a 
sequel. The third in the series relates the lamentations of 
the solitary Silvestre over the unhappy state of his affec- 
tions, and the arrival of Amador, who has fled from his own 
private grief. In the fourth Jano reappears, but as an exile 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 25 1 

in foreign lands on account of his unsuccessful suit. All 
these four poems were written previous to 1516. The fifth, 
composed many years later, is in dialogue form again. Two 
exiles, Ribeiro and Agrestes, meet as wanderers banished 
from their native country, and talk over their mishaps and 
their chances of returning home. 

The importance of these five poems consists almost 
wholly in the facts they relate, which are undoubtedly so 
many leading events in the career of their author. They 
show his departure from his native village, his sojourn at 
the court, his love for one above him in social station, his 
consequent exile from his fatherland, and finally his suppli- 
cation to be allowed to return to his home. Put these 
incidents into prose, turn the poems into chapters, tell the 
story in the first person, and you have an autobiographical 
novel, in pastoral disguise. This is precisely what Ribeiro 
did, in after years, and the result of the transformation is 
the pastoral romance Menina e Moga (Girl and Maiden). 

This unusual title is taken from the opening words of the 
story, which are spoken by the girl in question. A sub-title 
often used is Saudades (Regrets) de Bernardim Ribeiro. 
Perhaps the latter furnishes a better indication of the con- 
tents of the book, for after carefully reading the many short 
chapters of which it is composed, we are still in doubt as to 
the purpose of the author, and " Regrets " do not commit 
him to one thing or another. To increase our uncertainty 
in regard to his intention, Ribeiro has imitated in many 
of his scenes T:he characteristic episodes of the romances 
of chivalry. So the work is not strictly pastoral in spirit, 
though its setting is rural. Nor are all of its characters in 
pastoral disguise. And as a last objection there is no unity 
of action in its plot, for it is unmistakably divided between 
two distinct stories. 

The first part introduces a girl sitting on the banks of 
a brook, and bewailing the absence of her lover. But soon 



252 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

the approach of a woman of noble presence puts an end 
to her complaints, and starts the maiden on an account of 
her past life. Nothing particularly fascinating is seen in 
her story, and our own familiarity with such longings will 
excuse its omission here. The only new feature in it is the 
idyl of a nightingale, which, while singing its sweetest song 
on the overhanging bough, falls lifeless into the water and 
is borne away by the rushing current. The notion of this 
delicate sketch was probably derived from Provencal poetry, 
where the nightingale is the singer of the shepherds' loves. 
After the girl has finished, her audience reciprocates, and 
unfolds the occasion of her own sorrows : Lamentor, a 
knight renowned, comes from a far foreign land to escort 
two ladies. On approaching a bridge he is challenged by 
its keeper to a combat. He accepts the defiance and over- 
throws his opponent, who dies from the effect of his wounds. 
Now Lamentor pitches his tent near the fateful bridge, and 
for a time repels assaults and enjoys the company of his 
friends. But sorrow presses close on his footsteps. His 
own lady-love, Belisa, dies in childbirth, and leaves her 
knight and sister, Aonia, behind, to bewail her loss. The 
latter, however, is not long in finding a partial distraction, 
in the proffered suit of a new arrival, the knight Narbindel. 
Here the first division of Menina e Mo$a comes to an 
end. The pastoral element up to this point is hardly more 
than a pretense and an introduction. The principal 
theme is the episode of chivalry, and the love of Lamentor 
(anagram of Manoel, duke of Beja) for Belisa, the ana- 
gram of Isabella of Seville, who married Manoel in 1496, 
and died in childbirth two years later, approximately the 
time when Ribeiro appeared at the court of Portugal. So 
that his recollection of the sad ending of this happy mar- 
riage now serves him as a prelude to the recital of his own 
misfortunes. For the second part of Menina e Moca is the 
expansion of the five eclogues we have already reviewed. 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 253 

Narbindel arrives at the bridge and desires to fight with 
its keeper, in order to prove the greater loveliness of his 
own lady. But the bridge stands deserted, while Lamentor, 
in his tent, is mourning by the side of his dead mistress. 
Narbindel's sympathy is aroused by this sight, he follows 
Belisa's body to the tomb, and in the funeral train his eyes 
encounter the downcast face of Aonia. He does not delay 
in becoming smitten with her charms, though a recent unfor- 
tunate experience with Cruelsia, who had sent him to the 
bridge, might have taught him better. Yet he still fears this 
former flame and, to give her the slip, now dismisses his 
squire and changes his name to Bimnarder. Near a castle 
where Aonia has found refuge the fickle lover lingers for a 
while until his horse is devoured by wolves, and a herdsman 
receives him into his hut. Under the calm influence of 
this rustic friend, Bimnarder's spirit becomes softened. He 
renounces the ways of knight-errantry, and turns to the 
pastoral pursuit of a cowherd. But through all these out- 
ward changes his heart still beats true to Aonia. Night 
after night he watches her window, seeking to attract her 
attention, and at last his perseverance is rewarded by a pri- 
vate interview with her, which he owes to the kind offices 
of the chambermaid. No happiness is durable here below, 
and Bimnarder's was no exception to the rule. One night 
he is overcome by sleep at Aonia's casement and, falling to 
the ground, is so injured that he can no longer keep his 
daily tryst. But his mistress seeks him out in his wretched 
hovel, and by this decided assurance of her affection renews 
his amatory delights. Nevertheless his destiny must be ful- 
filled. Lamentor gives Aonia in marriage against her will 
to a wealthy suitor, Fileno. Bimnarder cannot endure this 
grief and flees the country, and the closing chapter of the 
romance shows us the unhappy Aonia bewailing her forced 
hymen. 

There can be no mistaking the thinly veiled actors in 



254 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL.' 

this part of Menina e Mo (a, and the anagrams might as 
well have been the true names of the persons they repre- 
sent. Aonia is certainly the Joanna of the second eclogue, 
while Narbindel or Bimnarder varies little from Bernardim. 
The story here is the story of the eclogue without much varia- 
tion. The characters are not all pastoral, but include real 
nobles undisguised, while the hero's adoption of a rural 
garb is not more serious than was the hermit life of Amadis 
himself. On the whole, then, there is a stronger tendency 
in this last half of the book toward the style of the romances 
of chivalry than toward the tone of the pastoral compo- 
sitions, and perhaps were it not for the beginning of the 
story it would be an error to number Menina e Mo fa among 
pastorals. Bat this very hesitancy between the two leading 
kinds of fiction in fashion at the time expresses most 
clearly Ribeiro's literary independence. And he is not con- 
tent with suggestions offered by moralistic literature alone, 
but looks in other directions for hints in perfecting his nar- 
rative. For instance Aonia's chambermaid in the castle 
performs the part of the go-between, which became such a 
feature of later Spanish comedy, and which was already in 
favor among the popular dramatists ; and the story of a 
bull-fight told by her is borrowed entirely from the great 
forerunner of Spanish drama, the play of Celestina. In 
regard to the mingling of prose and poetry, which Boccaccio 
and Sannazaro had carried out so persistently, Ribeiro's 
pastoral does not call for much comment. Possibly the 
substitution of prose for the original poetry of his plot had 
caused him to adhere more closely to one style of writing. 
At all events he introduces into Menina e Mo$a but two 
pieces of poetry, and they are both entirely foreign to the 
conception of the poems in Ameto or the Arcadia. One of 
the two again reveals Ribeiro's fondness for Provencal lit- 
erature, being an imitation of that poetical form of the 
troubadour song which goes by the name of solatz. 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 255 

Of pastoral traits, besides the introduction and the dis- 
guise of Narbindel, there is little to be said. Aonia's 
beauty is lightly touched upon, when Narbindel surprises 
her as she sits weeping with "loosened hair," but this is 
about all which recalls the usual pastoral descriptions, and 
this may just as well have been a non-pastoral epithet — 
practically the opinion we are obliged to form concerning 
the whole work. For when full justice has been done to 
Ribeiro and to his story, the importance of it, after all, is 
seen to be, not in itself, but in its effect on other authors 
and other works. Especially strong must have been its 
influence on the mind of Ribeiro's friend, Montemayor, the 
author of Diana, whose experiences tallied so closely with 
the account of this more modest composition. 

Ribeiro's eclogues were published during his lifetime, 
but Menina e Mo$a is posthumous, and was found among 
his papers after his death. Accordingly, it was not printed 
until 1554, but it must have been familiar in manuscript to 
his associates a score of years before. On its own account 
it received some attention among literary men, and when a 
second edition appeared in 1557 a sequel was appended, 
wholly in the style of the romances of chivalry, and pat- 
terned after the episodes of Amadis. Undoubtedly this 
sequel shows that the impression the story made on the 
public was one of a novel of erotic adventure, and any idea 
that it was an autobiography in the pastoral manner had 
died away. Ribeiro's merits as a pastoral writer may, there- 
fore, be summed up in the one statement that he made the 
personal side so prominent as not to be mistaken by those 
who knew him or were aware of his history. But he failed 
decidedly to convey his intention to strangers, and they 
looked on his few pastoral traits as so many digressions from 
the true way of knight-errantry. Still, he pointed out to the 
initiates of his circle the road to success in romancing. 
After him a greater talent could give to the world the 



256 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

account of his own fortunes, and could profit by Ribeiro's 
failure to conceal, by a pastoral disguise, the apparent iden- 
tity of his characters. 

The period of the development of the pastoral novel in 
Spain includes, therefore, the last quarter of the fifteenth 
century and the first half of the sixteenth. It was thus a 
much more sudden growth than the romance of chivalry, 
which had been gathering headway for generations before 
it claimed a place in the literature of the nation. The 
reasons for this early maturity of the pastoral are evident. 
Its style of composition could never be popular with the 
masses. It appealed purely to the taste of the more refined 
classes, and particularly courted the sympathy of the edu- 
cated. The pastoral is rarely plebeian, and the moment 
the pastoral idea in Spain and Portugal passed from the 
autos of the popular theater into eclogues, after the manner 
of Virgil and the Italians, or into narratives which repre- 
sented artificially the vicissitudes of their author's experi- 
ences, that instant did its conception become too subtle for 
the crowd, and its further cultivation lose all interest with 
the populace. Consequently it became purely the property 
of literary men, and as such was susceptible of a more 
speedy development. Notions foreign at first to its spirit 
were incorporated into it as diverting accessories, and 
artistic devices from literatures of every age and race were 
turned once more to literary profit. So, when the pastoral 
novel was fully ready for the public, it offered to its readers 
a union of novelistic elements most diverse in origin. 

Yet in all its transformations and accretions the chief 
characteristic of the modern prose-pastoral remained true 
to the conception of its great authority, Virgil. It told 
the personal experience of its author under the cloak of a 
pastoral disguise. This feature is the leading one among 
the authors of Spain and Portugal, as it had been pre-em- 
inent among the literary artists of Italy. In other respects 



ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 257 

the pastorals of the peninsula are widely different from their 
Italian predecessors. In Ribeiro or Montemayor there is no 
sign at all of national decadence, or of longing for a primitive 
era of simplicity and innocence. The idea of the Age of 
Gold gained no foothold among the prosperous subjects 
of Charles V.; and when the hopes of the world-empire 
faded with his abdication, the disappointment of the people 
took a more severe and realistic direction than had been the 
case with the less seriously minded courtiers of Florence 
and Ferrara. The theme of the most successful examples 
of the Spanish pastoral was the private life of their authors, 
and the pastoral cloak which concealed the true history of 
the writer would seem to have been merely the result of 
the influence of a literary fashion. 

It is probable also that the growth of the pastoral in the 
Spanish peninsula was favored by the improvement in the 
taste of the educated classes, and the consequent decline in 
their esteem of the romances of chivalry. Like the histor- 
ical novels of the nineteenth century, the tales of feudal 
prowess and magic arts soon palled on the more refined 
palates of the nation, and were gradually allowed to descend 
to the position of chapbooks and stories for children, 
while the pastoral novels with their higher aspirations after 
literary style and plan were taken as substitutes for the 
romances of national tradition ; and in this substitution it is 
very likely that the influence of Italy, whose literature com- 
manded during this period the admiration of all Europe, 
played a leading part. It was also undoubtedly a relief to 
escape from the didactic sentences of Amadis and Palmerin 
to a kind of composition which had no serious purpose and 
pointed no moral. In the pastorals there are no conflicts 
of virtue and vice, no heavy villains (unless we call the 
satyrs such) to bring down on their heads the condemnation 
of the galleries, and no suffering heroines to stir the pit to 
pity. They are distinctively a literature of amusement, and 



25 8 ORIGIN OF THE SPANISH PASTORAL NOVEL. 

being amusement and depending on gossip for the interest 
they excited, their career was neither so broad nor so 
enduring as the vogue of either their ideal predecessors 
or their matter-of-fact followers. The Spanish pastoral 
did not attain its complete form until the middle of the 
sixteenth century, and it did not last, even in its weak dilu- 
tions, more than two generations longer. And in spite of 
all attempts to attract and hold the attention of the public 
by excellence of style or novelty of subject, it produced 
really but one work which is readable at the present day, or 
indeed which appears to have excited a more than momen- 
tary interest among its own contemporaries. And this 
unique success of its kind is Montemayor's Diana. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MONTEMAYOR'S DIANA, ITS SEQUELS AND SUCCESSORS. 

Jorge de Montemayor — or Montemor, to give the Portu- 
guese spelling — was both a compatriot and friend of Sa de 
Miranda and Ribeiro, who had preceded him in the trade 
of pastoral writing. Like them, he seems to have early- 
deserted his fatherland for the wider field of action in 
Spain. He united in his person the qualities of a soldier 
and a musician, and in this latter capacity acquired a liveli- 
hood at the court of Castile. Montemayor was also a lyric 
poet, cultivating both the national and the Italian forms of 
verse. But, as is the case with the other literary men of his 
time, the events of his life are but little known. His love 
for nature may very well be traced to his youth spent on 
the banks of the Mondego, whose praises we have heard 
sounded by Sa, de Miranda, and his notion of revealing in 
pastoral disguise the misfortunes of his own heart may be 
assigned to the influence and example of his two associates. 

Still, all assumptions as to the origin of his work remain 
purely theoretical. The Diana is independent of any defi- 
nite model, unless we consider Menina e Mo$a to have 
served it in that capacity, and the whole tone of its plan 
and composition is completely individual. The difficulty 
of discovering literary progenitors for this book is further 
enhanced by the uncertainty regarding the time of its 
appearance. Authorities vary, by a score of years almost, 
concerning its date, though 1558 seems the most acceptable, 
since a writer speaks of the furore created by it at the 
Spanish court in 1559. But whatever may have given 

259 



260 MONTEMAYOKS DIANA. 

rise to the Diana, it is essentially national in tone and feel- 
ing, while the loans it makes from foreign sources are 
thoroughly assimilated to its indigenous material. And 
these loans affect rather the form than the substance. 
Diana is a record of private life, an autobiography of love, 
and the consistency of Montemayor in upholding this con- 
ception, and in subordinating to it all ornamental digressions, 
lies at the foundation of his success. For by this logical 
development of the plot his pastoral gained a unity of 
action and a vigor of inspiration, which the half-mystical 
stories of Boccaccio and Sannazaro had not been able to 
attain. 

The idea in Diana is the familiar one of unrequited love. 
Its contents are divided into seven books, for the most part 
prose and in Spanish. However, poetry is by no means 
lacking, of both the native and Italian varieties, and occa- 
sionally a poem in the vernacular of Portugal is found. The 
opening scene is laid among the valleys of Leon, where the 
shepherd, Sireno, is discovered lamenting the loss of his 
former companion and mistress, Diana, who had been mar- 
ried while he was away on a year's absence from the king- 
dom. Yet he still sings her praises and cherishes the letters 
he had received from her. While Sireno is sighing over 
the names he had cut in the bark of trees, and is gazing 
sadly at the fountain where he had passed so many happy 
hours, the voice of Silvano is heard near at hand. Silvano 
had been his unsuccessful rival in the past, and was now 
another victim of Diana's marriage. Misery ever loves 
company, and the gloomy swains entertain each other with 
both prose and poetical lamentations, until their desolate 
symposium is finally interrupted by another prey to amorous 
misfortune, in the person of the shepherdess Selvagia. This 
damsel proves to be a most vigorous champion of her sex, 
valiantly repelling the attacks on woman made by her mas- 
culine colleagues. After a while of polemics truce is 



MONTE MA YOR' S DIANA . 2 6 1 

established, and Selvagia consents to furnish entertainment 
by the recital of her own troubles. 

Her story is somewhat intricate. On the banks of the Douro 
she had met at a festival the lonely shepherdess, Ismenia, with 
whom she soon became intimate. She finally discovered by 
Ismenia's confession that the latter was a shepherd in dis- 
guise, Alanio by name, and Selvagia accordingly proceeds to 
fall in love with her acquaintance on the new basis of sex. But 
Ismenia's confession was false. She was a woman strongly 
resembling Alanio, whom she loved. The genuine Alanio 
now takes advantage of his great likeness to Ismenia, and 
passes himself off for her to Selvagia, who is not aware of 
the substitution. The real Ismenia, finding herself deserted 
by her lover, seeks consolation in the company of another 
shepherd, Montano, but with a change of amorous fortune, 
for Montano in turn does not delay long in becoming 
enamored of Selvagia. So we have a series of cross-loves, 
such as the imitations of Poliziano's Orfeo had made popu- 
lar in Italy. The tangle can be unraveled only by Selvagia's 
disappearance, which in due time takes place. 

After listening to this story, the two melancholy shepherds 
and their new friend agree to watch their flocks together, 
and to make a daily exchange of their sentiments in con- 
versation and song. While they are dragging out in this 
manner a sorrowful existence, one morning they are de- 
lighted by the arrival of three nymphs, who come up sing- 
ing villancicos. After the singing they tell each her history, 
until the entertainment is broken up by the appearance of 
three wild men (evidently Montemayor's modernization of 
satyrs), who lay violent hands on the nymphs and are 
about to carry them away. But the ravishers are trans- 
fixed by the arrows of a shepherdess, who comes upon the 
stage of action in the nick of time. As reward for the 
service she has thus rendered them, the valiant archer, 
Felismena by name, insists on using the assembled com- 



262 MONTEMAYOR'S DIANA. 

pany as an audience for her story, the longest in the 
book. 

Felismena's mother, having dared to question the justice 
of Paris' award of the golden apple, had a dream wherein 
Venus appeared to her and foretold her death in child- 
birth, and the unfortunate career in love of the fruit of her 
womb. On the other hand the distressed woman was 
straightway assured by Minerva that the child would be 
both prudent and brave. Now when Felismena had 
reached the age of discretion she became violently smitten 
with a young nobleman, Don Felix. When he was sent to 
court by his father she followed him, entered his service 
disguised as a page, and served as a messenger between 
him and a new mistress, Celia. The latter inconsiderately 
falls in love with the. supposed boy, and dies of grief at the 
rejection of her love. Thereupon Don Felix disappears, 
and Felismena assumes the shepherd's dress. 

This story is very like the tale told by Eustathius in his 
Hys7nenias and Hysmene, and from the use which Monte- 
mayor has made of one of the proper names of the Byzan- 
tine narrative in his heroine, Ismenia, it seems quite certain 
that he was acquainted with at least some portions of the 
Greek novel and has adapted them to his purpose. But 
he has handled this foreign material in the most artistic 
manner ; and by cleverly filling in the borrowed outlines 
with Spanish customs and Spanish characteristics, he has 
imparted to his revision of Eustathius such a local coloring 
and impression of reality that it might pass very well for 
the recital of an actual occurrence. 

Now the rescued nymphs, whose conduct had been irre- 
proachable during this extended discourse, wisely head off 
any further speeches by offering to lead the way to Diana's 
temple. All gladly accept their guidance and the journey 
is begun, thus giving the author an opportunity for a 
picture of nature, which he improves ; " With very great 



MONTEMAYOR'S DIANA. 263 

contentment the beautiful nymphs were journeying along 
with their company through the midst of a dense wood, 
and when the sun was about to set they came out into a 
laughing valley, through which a wild torrent flowed, 
adorned on either side by thick willows and alders, among 
which were many other kinds of smaller trees that entwined 
themselves with the larger and interlaced the golden flowers 
of some with the green branches of others. The sight of 
them gave great pleasure. The nymphs and shepherds fol- 
lowed a path which led along between the stream and the 
beautiful grove, and they had not gone far when they 
reached a broad meadow, where was a most charming pool, 
from which the brook came and rushed down the valley 
with great force. In the midst of the pool was a small 
island, where some trees were growing, which almost veiled 
a shepherd's hut. Back of this was a flock of sheep grazing 
on the green grass. Then as that place appeared to the 
nymphs suitable for passing the night, which was now upon 
them, by means of some stones which had been placed in 
regular order from the meadow to the island through the 
middle of the pool, they all crossed over dry-shod and went 
straight toward the hut they had seen on the island." 

In this hut they find a shepherdess asleep. When she 
wakes she tells them that her name is Belisa, and that she 
had formerly, in another condition in life, been courted by 
both father and son. The father made the son, of whose 
passion he was ignorant, the bearer of his letters to his 
beloved, and the singer of his songs in the nightly serenades. 
One night the supposed son is talking to Belisa from a tree 
near her window, when the father chances to come that 
way. He hears the vows addressed to his mistress, does 
not recognize their author, and in a rage shoots an arrow 
into the tree-top. The son falls to the ground, and the 
father, discovering his mistake too late, kills himself on the 
spot. 



264 MONTEMA YOJ?'S DIANA. 

After telling this story, which bears all the marks of a 
genuine Spanish comedy — love, jealousy, night scenes, 
murder — Belisa concludes to join the company and go 
with them to the temple. As they approach the building 
nymphs come out to meet them, together with a wise and 
mature beauty, Felicia. The temple, which the author 
describes in detail, is adorned with the statues of the 
national heroes and women of high rank in the kingdom, 
and each statue bears its own private eulogy in rhyme. 
The entertainment at this place was furnished by Orpheus, 
who, being preserved there by enchantment, was able to 
extol in song the charms of the Renaissance beauties. To 
this 7nusicale succeeded a feast of reason, in which love, as 
the offspring of reason, was made the subject of discussion. 
After this tertulia^ Felismena recites a Valencian tale she 
has heard, and which forms the most interesting part of 
Diana. But unfortunately there is not much doubt nowa- 
days that this story is an interpolation of a later editor of 
the book, and that it was not found in the original during 
Montemayor's lifetime. It is in style a Moorish romance, 
and its subject is the love of Jarifa and Abindarraez, the 
last of the Abencerrages. 

This narrative, as it appears in Diana, is the account of an 
adventure which had already found its way into literature, 
or popular tradition, and of which various other renderings 
appeared about this time, notably that of Antonio de 
Villegas. Yet the celebrity of this episode in foreign lands, 
where it had many imitators, was due mainly to the version 
which the renown of Diana circulated so widely. It is 
most romantic in character and proceeds as follows : 

In the reign of Ferdinand of Aragon, during an expedi- 
tion against the Moors, the Spanish knight, Rodrigo de Nar- 
vaez, went out one night to reconnoiter the position of the 
enemy. On reaching the banks of a river he divided his 
escort of nine warriors, left five of them to guard the ford, 



MONTEMA YOR S DIANA . 265 

and passed the stream with the remaining four. Soon after 
their companions had disappeared, the watchers by the ford 
heard the sound of music, and from their ambush became 
aware that a young Moor was passing near on horseback, 
singing as he went songs in praise of his lady-love. The 
Spaniards rush from their hiding-place and fall upon him, 
but he resists them most stoutly, and is on the point of rout- 
ing them all when the appointed signal from a horn reaches 
the ears of Rodrigo, and hastens his return. On his arrival 
a single combat is arranged, in which the Moor, who has 
been exhausted by his previous efforts, is finally worsted by 
his fresh adversary. On the way back to his castle with his 
captive, Rodrigo is struck with the latter's melancholy, and 
after a long insistence receives the confidence of his pris- 
oner. He was Abindarraez, the only survivor of the princely 
house of the Abencerrages, whose execution had shaken the 
walls of the last Moslem stronghold in Spain almost to the 
ground. Abindarraez had escaped the general massacre of 
his kindred by having been sent, while a mere child, to a 
castle on the frontier, the warden of which, an old friend of 
the young Moor's father, had reared him like his own son. 
This warden had an only child, a daughter, Jarifa by name, 
who supposed Abindarraez to be her own true brother, as 
he believed her to be his sister. The affection and trust 
between them was only strengthened by the later revelation 
of their real position, and when Jarifa's father was ordered 
to a new post, and the young Abencerrage returned to serve 
his king, the lovers kept up a frequent communication with 
each other. It was on one of these visits to his lady that he 
had fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, and his chagrin 
at his captivity was embittered by the thought that Jarifa 
would look in vain for him. 

Such a story could not fail to appeal to the chivalrous 
spirit of Rodrigo. He grants his prisoner temporary liberty 
on the condition that in three days he will place himself 



266 MONTEMAYOR'S DIANA. 

again in his power. Abindarraez joyfully accepts the offer, 
hastens to the castle of his beloved, and in her presence for- 
gets for the time all perils, past and to come. But when the 
three days are nearly over, and the hour approaches when 
he must fulfill his promise, sadness begins to oppress his 
noble mind. His mistress perceives it and wonders. Silence 
only adds to her anxiety, and so he is at last obliged to 
apprise her of the situation and his compact with Rodrigo. 
After the first outburst of grief the Moorish maiden takes 
counsel of her love, and determines to return to the Spanish 
castle with her lover, where they arrive together in season to 
redeem the plighted word. Their fidelity to the pledge and 
to each other arouses still further Rodrigo's magnanimity. 
He does not delay to restore to them their freedom, and 
couples with this gift a letter to the Moorish sovereign, in 
which he asks of him pardon for the Abencerrage. The 
king cannot fail to yield to the petition of so courteous an 
enemy, and nothing now stands in the way of the future 
happiness of the faithful lovers. 

After the insertion of this truly romantic episode, the 
revised Diana returns to Montemayor's narrative, and to 
the temple where the company was assembled. There the 
arts of enchantment reign. Felicia sinks Sireno, Silvano, 
and Selvagia into a deep sleep by the innocent means of a 
draught of water. When they are brought to consciousness 
again, Sireno finds himself entirely cured of his love for 
Diana, and Silvano and Selvagia become aware that they are 
prepared to reciprocate each other's affection. After a 
while they all leave the temple and go each his own way. 
Felismena, as she travels on alone, hears by accident the 
complaint of Arsileo, who is the youth that was supposed to 
have fallen a victim to his father's rage while he was court- 
ing Belisa. In his lament Arsileo accuses a hostile nec- 
romancer of conjuring up two spirits in order to deceive 
Belisa and drive her to despair. It was exceedingly oppor- 



MONTEMA YOR'S DIANA. 267 

tune that Arsileo should have detailed all these circumstances 
in Felismena's hearing, for she straightway interrupted his 
sorrow, sent him away to find Belisa, and thus made two 
loving hearts one. She is also instrumental in reconciling 
another couple of which the swain had been jealous of 
Arsileo. Now all the chief characters are satisfied and 
peaceable save .Diana, who begins to bemoan her marriage 
and upbraids Sireno for his change of heart. 

But Felismena is not yet rewarded. She wanders over 
Spain and Portugal, and at last reaches the vicinity of 
Coimbra. There on an island in the river she sees a mortal 
combat of three against one. She comes to the assistance 
of the one, beats off his foes, and finds that she has thus 
rescued her own knight, Don Felix. Water cures his 
wounds, the balm of his affection her lacerated heart, and 
finally united in holy bonds they commence a pilgrimage 
toward Diana's temple, where the author temporarily leaves 
them. 

The intention of Montemayor, as declared in the closing 
pages of Diana, was to continue that book at some future 
time, and to bring the remaining features of his plot to some 
definite solution. Consequently, the part which he actually 
wrote is to be considered as a portion of the whole, and its 
sins against unity of action, which is not as complete in 
Dia?ia as it was in the far less artistic Menina e Moga y are 
perhaps to be pardoned on that account. For, as the book 
now stands, the heroine of the beginning of the story, Diana, 
is supplanted by the later arrival Felismena, and the adven- 
tures of the latter are brought to a happy end, while the 
reconciliation of Sireno to his mistress is yet to be accom- 
plished. Besides this unfinished ending, the author hurries 
the matter of his concluding chapters to such an extent 
that the reader becomes entangled in the different threads 
of his narrative. Yet his principal object is plain in spite 
of all digressions. He wishes to show how Diana is pun- 



268 MONTEMAYOR' S DIANA. 

ished for her inconstancy, and how Sireno, who is evidently 
Montemayor himself, becomes indifferent to her without 
acquiring the consolation of a new love. There is also a 
didactic strain in the story, where reasonable affection, 
which depends on enduring charms, is typified by the image 
of the goddess' temple. 

The general movement of Diana is quite attractive. At 
first the author is disposed to tell his tale quietly and leis- 
urely, while by judiciously mingling poetry with his prose 
he relieves the modern reader, at least, from the tedious- 
ness which would be necessarily begotten by the lack of 
solidity in his scenes. His descriptions also are excellent, 
whether of nature, people, or buildings, and are pleasantly 
varied. In all of them a hearty regard for Spain and Por- 
tugal, and pride in the greatness of the former nation, 
pierces easily the assumed covering of prehistoric surround- 
ings. In strong contrast to the Italian pastorals there are 
in Diana no traces of Arcadia, and no employment of gen- 
uine paganism. Nor on the other hand is there anything 
in the book which is distinctively Christian. Yet its tone 
throughout is personal and modern, and its episodes and 
allusions are peculiarly local. So strongly indeed does this 
flavor of actual experience pervade the material which 
Montemayor has gathered together from so wide a field, 
that all events which are not of the sixteenth century appear 
like anachronisms, and the introduction of any heathen 
deities at all seems a sin against literary taste. 

It is interesting also to notice how Montemayor's loans 
from the romances of chivalry, especially the features of 
magic and enchantment, jar with the tone of his observa- 
tion of real life. We feel that in Diana there is no need of 
supernatural agencies to heighten the merits of the novel in 
the eyes of the public. The author is so thoroughly bent 
on giving his own statement of his career (once even he 
appears in the first person) that any use of marvels for 



MONTEMA YOR'S DIANA. 269 

popular consumption seems entirely superfluous. For there 
cannot be much doubt that the delight of the Spanish 
courtiers of Philip II. in the story of Sireno and his mis- 
tress was due to the element of gossip which they discov- 
ered in it, quite as much as to its beautiful descriptions and 
its varied verse. To be sure, it was the first good specimen 
of Spanish prose which dealt with love as a principal theme, 
and thus it afforded a change of literary diet to the lords 
and ladies who had become weary of the extravagant 
prowess of Amadis and Palmerin. In fact, Diana contains 
no small dose of sentimentality, which evidently suited the 
palates of its day, while there is in the style of its composi- 
tion a sufficient tendency toward conceits (which later be- 
came so popular under the name of Gongorism) to allow 
the literary set of Madrid, to which these were particularly 
addressed, a pleasurable feeling of superiority over their 
rough and unfinical contemporaries. For there are times 
when literary success may be achieved by an appeal to 
intellectual esteem, and by an open disregard of the com- 
mon herd, though we cannot say that Diana depended for 
the welcome which might await it on this sentiment of 
caste alone, or a certain degree of initiation into literary 
arcana. Its novelty of subject, its personal bearing, and its 
flowing periods, all had their share in the favorable result. 
But the novel never was known in Spain outside a select 
circle, and it was not adapted to the comprehension of the 
vulgar. When the crowd abandoned the romances of chiv- 
alry it demanded stronger mental nourishment than was 
afforded by the pastoral novels. 

Not only in the matter of magic did Montemayor's pastoral 
feel the influence of the romances of chivalry. Its whole 
conception of gallantry was borrowed from these aristocratic 
predecessors. This is shown in various ways, as in the fre- 
quent appearance of epistles in the first part of Diana, thus 
continuing the fashion set by the authors of Amadis, or in 



270 MONTEMA YOR'S DIANA. 

the courtly conversations between the lovers in the different 
episodes of the pastoral. Perhaps Montemayor's style 
marks a progress in the use of conceits over the narratives 
of erotic adventure, and thus may point the way to the sub- 
sequent pre'ciosite of the Hotel de Rambouillet. A good 
example of highflown conversations may be taken from the 
Felismena-Don Felix story. In this part Celia, who does not 
reciprocate the affection of her vehement suitor, makes 
answer to him in this manner : 

" 'Never was a thing, which I might suspect of your love, 
so far from the truth as to give me occasion for not believ- 
ing my suspicion many times more than your excuse. And 
if in this I do you wrong lay it to your forgetfulness, that 
you could indeed deny past loves and not give occasion to 
be condemned for your confession. You say that I was the 
cause of your forgetting your first love. Console yourself 
with this, that another woman will not be wanting to make 
you forget your second. And be assured, Sir Felix, for I 
affirm to you that there is nothing worse for a knight than 
to find in any lady whatsoever an occasion for becoming lost 
on her account. And I shall not say more, because in evils 
without a remedy it is the best thing not to procure it for 
one's self.' " All of which is certainly frank, and framed so 
that Don Felix can hardly have failed to see the point. 

It is hardly necessary to trace out the imprints of the pre- 
vious pastoral poetry or prose of Spain and Portugal on the 
content of Diana. They are visible everywhere, and par- 
ticularly in the great allegory of the novel, Diana's temple, 
which was erected to the glory of the great names in the 
nation, and to the memory of their deeds. In his poetical 
passages Montemayor naturally imitates the stanzas of the 
Italian pastorals, and the latter undoubtedly contributed also 
to the ease and amplitude of his style. Poetical contests 
are not absent from his work, nor mottoes, eulogies in verse, 
nor songs. The richness of his strophic forms excited the 



MONTEMA YOR' S DIANA . 271 

admiration of his countrymen, and of foreigners as well, 
while the emulation they aroused at home and abroad did 
much to preserve the popularity of the novel. No less interest 
did the Spaniards show in its disguised characters, and we 
read in the histories of the century, that some fifty years 
after the author's death his heroine, the real Diana, was vis- 
ited in her old age by the court of Philip III. Such was the 
honor in which Montemayor was still held. Yet we must 
not suppose that in his disguised personages he attempts 
character painting at all. The actors on his stage represent 
but one emotion or one talent, and in no way could they 
pass for delineations of real human beings. 

From what we already know regarding the career of suc- 
cessful novels in the sixteenth century, we shall not be sur- 
prised to find that the popularity of Diana tempted the 
ambition of many other writers, who fancied it was necessary 
to their renown to furnish that continuation to the original 
work which its author had himself promised, but had not 
lived to accomplish. Consequently in 1564, but three years 
after Montemayor's death, two sequels were placed on the 
market, one by Alonzo Perez and the other by Gaspar Gil 
Polo. The production of the former is roundly rated by 
the curate in Don Quixote, and put with the combustibles of 
the hidalgo's library ; and it certainly merited the trial of fire. 

For Perez did not heed altogether the plan which his 
friend had in mind, and which he had expressed near the 
end of his Diana, but after obeying his wishes so far as to 
renew the lamentations of the heroine, and to lead the com- 
pany, increased by new swains, through conversations and 
singing back to the temple, he branches off into inventions 
of his own. He introduces a character, Parfiles, who is 
seeking for his lost daughter, Stella, and when she is found 
the attention of the reader is invited to the perusal of her 
love affairs. Stella is of the haughty type in matters of 
affection, though when she is accused of undue coldness to 



272 MONTE MA YOR 'S DIANA. 

her suitors she defends herself very much as Marcella after- 
ward did in the pastoral episode of the first part of Don 
Quixote. After the second book of such a sequel very little 
of the original plot is naturally to be looked for, and when, 
after unfolding many times in various descriptions the 
abundance of his mythological erudition, Perez is reminded 
at the end of his eighth book to kill off Diana's husband, 
Delio, it is too late in the day for Sireno to profit by her 
long deferred widowhood. So nothing has been accom- 
plished, and Perez concludes by promising still a third part 
in which he hopes to reach a solution. This promise he 
luckily never kept. 

The other continuation, known as Diana Enamorada, 
met with Cervantes' approval, and is not so very uninterest- 
ing as a literary type, even to a reader of the present day. 
First and foremost it has the virtue of brevity. Like Perez, 
this rival brings in at the beginning a new character in the 
person of the shepherdess Alcida, who endeavors to console 
Diana for Sireno's change of heart. Their confidences are 
cut short by the arrival of Delio, who at first indulges in 
a scene of jealousy, and afterward falls violently in love 
with Alcida. But the latter's suitors are already too 
numerous and too persistent for her comfort, so she escapes 
from this last addition to them, and leaves the stage to one 
of her former adorers, Marcelio by name. He has a long 
tale of woe in store for us. He had been betrothed to 
Alcida in Africa, had sailed with her for Lisbon, but had 
been overtaken by a storm at sea, and had been shipwrecked 
and was carried off by the sailors, thus completing a series 
of episodes, which may very well have been suggested by 
the Greek novels. After Marcelio has had his say, Ismenia 
takes the floor and abuses her husband, Montano, in a story 
which could easily furnish high comedy with a good plot. 
After Ismenia is done the adventures of new actors fill out 
a couple of books. Here we have long-lost relatives and 



MONTEMAYOR'S DIANA. 273 

sweethearts to be recognized, disguises to be assumed and 
penetrated, songs to be sung, and eulogies to be pro- 
nounced. One digression is a glorification of the men of 
Valencia, much after the style of Montemayor's praise of 
Spanish grandees, and among the names cited by Polo we 
recognize the familiar one of the poet Ausias March. 
Finally, after long wandering samong subjects of his own 
invention, the author returns to the task he had inherited, 
kills off Delio, changes the spirit of Sireno by the oracles of 
the stars, and marries him to Diana. The fifth book is 
occupied with an account of the wedding festivities, told 
in most extravagant language, and Diana Enamorada comes 
to an end, like the original, with the promise of a sequel in 
which the new threads of the plot are to be untangled, and 
the long-deferred fate of Danteo and Duarda, which had 
rested so heavily on Montemayor's conscience, is to be 
revealed. But literary men, even in the sixteenth century, 
were as fickle as their heroes, and no third part was pub- 
lished by Polo or anyone else until 1627, when a writer in 
Paris, by the name of Texeda, foisted on the public a 
jumble of Polo and stories from other Spanish authors 
which can claim neither value nor consequence. 

But Polo's sequel is not to be dismissed with a mere analy- 
sis only. He was a man of no inconsiderable talent, though 
his book may hardly pretend to the originality or the fresh- 
ness of its model. He was a good versifier, and extended 
his poetical acquisitions to the use of French and Provencal, 
as well as Spanish. He has, however, too high an idea of 
pure rhetoric, and becomes too labored in his striving after 
artistic effects. More worldly minded than Montemayor, he 
courted the favor of polite society and incorporated into 
his fiction many of its games and tableaux. Besides, in his 
role of the continuator of Diana, he shows himself too sub- 
servient to his predecessor, exhausting his reader by his 
frequent references to the original pastoral. Yet Cervantes' 



274 MONTEMA YOR'S DIANA. 

praise proves that Polo was appreciated by his countrymen, 
while abroad his book had no small success and received 
the honor of several translations into French. It is also of 
such a nature that it can be read to-day, a remark that can- 
not be made perhaps of any other pastoral that followed in 
the wake of Diana. 

For in the two generations which succeeded the pub- 
lication of Montemayor's novel not a few Spaniards tried to 
repeat the success of their Portuguese master in the pastoral 
art. What reward crowned their efforts is best seen in the 
judgment of the curate in Don Quixote. Of the five pastoral 
novels which he enumerates, four he condemns without 
deeming them worthy of further remark, and the fifth, which 
he praises, is not much better than the rest. Its author, 
Montalvo, was Cervantes' friend, whence the difference, per- 
haps. Still his book was shorter than the others, and one 
needs only to read the specimens composed by his con- 
temporaries to appreciate the part that the element of 
brevity plays in any literary criticism of the Spanish pas- 
toral. 

The first of these novels which have a subject independent 
of Diana, is the Ten Books of the Fortune of Love, pub- 
lished in 1573 by Antonio de lo Frasso. The contents are 
mainly in verse, and are a mere compilation of scenes with- 
out plot or conclusion. Letters and poetry are couched in the 
most flowery and bombastic style, and the inevitable palace 
comes in for a gorgeous description. There are traces of the 
Italian dramatic pastoral, as in the discovery of the torn 
veil of a shepherdess, which presupposes her death by wild 
beasts. Local pride is present in the praise of Catalonia, 
and in the jousts which take place at Barcelona, while even 
politics, of the anti-democratic kind, are not eschewed. A 
more tiresome and pointless volume it is hard to find, though 
literary history may get a crumb of interest out of it from 
its unconscious collection of the germs of all those defects, 



MONTEMAYOR'S DIANA. 2 75 

which have made the name of Gongora so notorious in the 
annals of Spanish authorship. 

Montalvo's Filida, which appeared in 1582, is a novel of 
disguised characters where the disguise is very apparent. 
It has no plot, or at least no solutions of the many scenes in 
which we see Philida and fellow-shepherdesses being wooed 
by a larger number of shepherds, some of whom are not 
really in love with the maidens to whom they are paying 
court, but are merely taking that method to arouse the jeal- 
ousy of their chosen mistresses. The usual temple of Diana 
is built again (here displaying all the wonders of the world), 
and the ladies of Spain are again gratified by seeing their 
names in print. The romance of chivalry comes in for a 
share of influence, as it had done in Lo Frasso's pastoral, 
and an interesting touch of realism is revealed in the pas- 
sage where Montalvo feels called upon to appear in person, 
and defend himself against the criticism that ordinary shep- 
herds do not pasture their flocks near the hiding-places of 
wolves. But even without a plot Filida has redeeming 
features in the excellence of its style. It is simple, without 
bombasts or conceits. There is no attempt to keep up the 
threadbare fiction of pagan surroundings, and the poetry 
of the book is good and varied. But when one has read 
the Diana, even the best of its imitations are somewhat 
wearing. 

Cervantes himself tried his hand at the kind, a few years 
after Filida, in his pastoral Galatea. The prologue of this 
book remarks on the fashion of writing eclogues, and states 
the author's own inclination toward poetical composition. At 
the same time it very justly apologizes for the metaphysical 
disquisitions which are woven into the body of his narrative, 
yet forgets to excuse his many conceits and the euphuistic 
tone of his descriptions. Even later, in Don Quixote, when 
Cervantes has occasion to refer to this production of his 
earlier years, he still seems to be unconscious of its most 



276 MONTEMAYOR'S DIANA. 

striking deficiencies. The heroine of the story, Galatea, is 
a kind of Felicia. The court ladies esteem her for her wis- 
dom. She is indifferent to love, and, as a sad consequence, 
is all the more harassed by the pursuit of indefatigable rustic 
swains. This is about all that can be found concerning the 
chief character. Cervantes' efforts are all centered on the 
various episodes he describes, and in which he relates events 
which are far more dramatic than any we have yet met with 
in the Spanish pastoral. 

One of the episodes is the familiar tale of love between 
children of hostile families ; and the murders which there- 
upon ensue — some of which are due to mistaken identity — 
give anything but a cheerful picture of the village life of the 
time. Other episodes supply us with an assortment of 
imperfect suicides, increase our knowledge of contempo- 
raneous happenings by repeated allusions, and narrate to our 
delectation fierce combats with infidel Turks. Naturally, in 
the midst of these gleanings from active existence, the 
intended portrayal of pastoral life stands very little show. 
Let once the shepherds get well under way in recounting 
their experiences, and a series of most startling occurrences 
cuts short their reminiscences before any crises are reached. 
In the same way their assemblies are often interrupted by 
the approach of some powerful vocalist. Therefore unity 
of action cannot be looked for in such a compilation, and 
even the pastoral pretense often goes by the board. Still 
Montemayor was evidently a powerful influence in the 
thought of Cervantes, and imitations of Diana abound in 
Galatea, particularly the long discussions on the nature of 
love, the attempts to analyze the tender passion, and the 
eulogies of noted Spaniards, which Cervantes very loyally 
turns to the profit of the writers of the day. A conclusion 
to this work was promised, whether because it was the 
fashion so to do, or because Cervantes really meant it. 
But it never appeared, and Galatea slumbered on, practi- 



MONTE ATA YOJ? S DIANA. 277 

cally unnoticed, for two centuries, almost to a year, when it 
was revived in French by the amiable Florian. 

In the same decade with Galatea, other poorer pastorals, 
if possible, saw the light. Of a moral tendency, showing 
the sin of jealousy, was Truth for the Jealous, by Bartolome 
Lopez de Enciso. The story is located on the banks of 
the Tagus, where a fight between two jealous shepherds is 
in progress. They are separated by third parties, and an 
assembly is formed to listen to songs. One singer mentions 
a certain Clarina, and her name brings out a story from 
Delanio, who tells how he had forsaken Florista for Clarina 
and the consequent rage of the former. Soon after this 
account the neglected one appears on the scene, and enters 
upon a long series of talks with the wise Laurenio on the 
nature of jealousy. New shepherds and fresh shepherdesses 
come in, love, and become jealous, while the wise shepherd 
calmly sits by and cites examples of the passion in antiquity. 
From these platitudes the reader is at last rescued by 
Enciso in person, who breaks into his pastoral with a descrip- 
tion of the conventional palace, and eulogies of the royal 
family. After this broader digression the story is resumed 
for a while, finally closing with the usual promise of a 
sequel. But no one evidently cared for further moral 
advice on jealousy, and we hear no more of Enciso. 

The next year, 1587, a shorter pastoral was published, 
having the avowed object of extolling Spanish scenery. It 
was called the Nymphs and Shepherds of the Henares, and 
its author signed himself Bernardo Goncalez de Bovadilla, 
" student in the illustrious University of Salamanca." Like 
the others already cited, this new pastoral has a very slight 
plot. Its hero, Florino, is disdained by the beautiful 
Rosalia, and is consoled by the sympathetic Melampo. But 
Melampo soon receives his own sorrow, for Palanea will 
have none of him. Florino after a time is sent with his 
flock to the dales of the Tormes, and the nymphs are left to 



278 MONTE MA YOR'S DIANA. 

lament his absence, while Palanea also mourns over her 
desertion by Melampo. And so the story goes, enlivened 
— to look on the hopeful side of life — by many songs of 
ancient and mediaeval love, and by chronicles of Danish 
history in verse. Finally, Florino is allowed to return to 
the Henares, and is there reconciled with the repentant 
Rosalia. 

Another pastoral of limited fame, and unknown to modern 
readers, is mentioned by Cervantes under the title of Shep- 
herds of Iberia. It was written by Bernardo de la Vega in 
1591. The book seems to have disappeared, and we can 
give no extended analysis of it. There is no question that 
it was tedious even in its own time, and met with no suc- 
cess. The same thing is true of a religions imitation of 
Diana, and one or two secular pastorals of this closing 
decade of the century, though one redeeming book was 
published then, and one more writer, now illustrious, tried 
his hand at pastoral composition. This writer is none 
other than Lope de Vega himself, and his work bears the 
title of its Italian predecessor, the Arcadia. 

Lope's story is distinguished from its fellows in that it 
maintains some connection between its several parts, and 
shows a little sense in its narrative. Its model was evi- 
dently Sannazaro's pastoral, and the locality chosen for the 
action is that of Greek Arcadia. But even with these tradi- 
tional influences of mythology and classicism at work the 
actors in the new Arcadia are shepherds born on the banks 
of the Tagus, and many of its incidents recall the well- 
worn themes of the Spanish pastorals. Consequently Lope 
is always mixing up fabled antiquity with the Spain of 
Phillip II., and yet redeems such confusion in place and 
time by the merits of his poetry, the excellences of his style, 
and the fecundity of his erudition in the domain of ancient 
learning. The Arcadia begins as follows : The shepherdess 
Belisarda is wooed by many suitors and is won by Anfriso, 



MON TEMA Y01? S DIA NA. 279 

though she has been betrothed by her parents to the 
unworthy Salicio. When the shepherds meet they complain 
of the lovers, and then proceed to discuss the essence of 
love. Afterward Menalca begins a story, in which a giant 
plays a part. Though she is frequently interrupted by out- 
side happenings, and subordinate tales chosen from the 
fables of mythology, yet strong in the virtue of perseverance 
she holds on her way undaunted, whenever there is a 
momentary lull in this agitated rural existence. The secret 
affection of Anfriso and Belisarda becoming known, the 
shepherd is sent away from his village, and must trust his 
sighs to pen and ink. He visits Italy, is there tampered 
with by a magician, and at last is induced to abandon his 
mistress. Her anger and spite on learning of his fickleness 
throw her into the ever-open arms of Salicio, and only when 
she is firmly married do the lovers learn of their mutual 
mistake. Now, Anfriso has but one refuge — the intellectual 
one. The wise Polinesta takes him in charge, cures him of 
love by the allurements of learning, and makes out of a very 
shaky suitor a very solid student. Having reached this 
edifying goal through a sea of incidents and a forest of 
citations, the author concludes his book with a eulogy of the 
Duke of Alva, for whom the novel had been undertaken. 

The amazing multiplicity of Lope's digressions, and the 
extent of his knowledge of the learning of all ages, might 
very well have discouraged any less completely equipped 
author from pursuing the line of pastoral composition 
after the appearance of the Arcadia. And it was indeed 
some years before the style was taken up again with any 
degree of success. Near the end of the first decade of the 
seventeenth century the Spanish pastoral was revived along 
the lines of free imitation of the Italians, as Lope had sug- 
gested, and some works of considerable literary value were 
the result of this second growth. But popular interest had 
declined, and the authors, who desired something more than 



280 MONTE MA YORS DIANA. 

a parlor public, turned their energies to other themes which 
contained a stronger element of novelty. The fact is that 
Diana had incorporated into its own self all the pastoral 
notions of the time, and the contents of its score of imita- 
tions in Spain produced nothing new of a genuine pastoral 
nature. Perhaps the best of all these later stories is the 
book of another Portuguese, written in the Portuguese 
idiom, the Primavera of Francisco de Lobo. In the suc- 
cessive pages of this novel, which appeared in parts during 
the first fifteen years of the seventeenth century, the land- 
scape and rural manners of Portugal are eulogized with a fair 
degree of taste and vigor. But no successors were awak- 
ened by the Primavera in the western kingdom, and the 
days of the pastoral were felt to be numbered. 

It had taken but six decades, two generations, to exhaust 
in western Europe the pastoral school of literature. The 
reason for this short life lies obviously in the artificiality of 
the kind. Its themes appealed only to a limited and fash- 
ionable circle, and with the change of the fashion it passed 
away. On account of these restrictions in interest and cul- 
tivation it is very difficult to estimate the real importance 
of the pastoral novel, and the amount of its direct influence. 
Diana had certainly a long and successful run. It went 
through many editions, both in the original and in transla- 
tions. But apart from this pioneer, Lope de Vega's Arcadia 
seems to be the only pastoral which attracted any general 
attention, at least if we are to judge by the standard of suc- 
cessive editions, perhaps the only fair criterion. Even Cer- 
vantes' name could give his Galatea nothing but the honor 
of foreign renderings. A general survey of the field would 
bring us, then to the conclusion that the excellence of the 
Diana and the tone of its thought started a literary fashion, 
of which various writers tried to take advantage, whose works, 
however, had not sufficient merit to find a welcome outside 
of the family circles of the patrons to whom they were 



MONTEMA YOR'S DIANA. 281 

dedicated. For the only echo of their existence to be 
found in other Spanish fiction of the times would seem to be 
confined to that disturbing episode in the first part of Don 
Quixote, where Grisostomo languishes and dies for love of 
the hard-hearted Marcella. The pastoral element in the 
drama of Spain held true to the tradition of the eclogue 
and the auto, and it never produced those elaborate spectac- 
ular plays which placed before the theater-goers of France 
entire episodes, dramatized bodily from the pastoral novels 
of the day. 

But when we consider the effect of Diana on the develop- 
ment of the modern novel, we must assign it a place sec- 
ond in importance in the history of fiction to Amadis of 
Gaul alone. For in its two hundred pages of poetry and 
prose are found the germs of many novelistic notions, sug- 
gestions of emotions or situations, which have been elab- 
orated in later times and in other lands by authors of the 
ideal school, who in the majority of cases were not aware 
of the source of their inspiration. Still it was not its pas- 
toral disguise which gave Diana so wide a circle of influ- 
ence, but rather the sentimentality of the book, the modern 
feeling of sadness, and the modern view of nature's sym- 
pathy with man, which is its most distinguishing character- 
istic. To appreciate the tone of Diana and its effect on 
the minds of its public, we have only to compare it with the 
Greek pastoral of Dafihnis and Chloe, which the translation 
of Amyot made accessible to the literary men of France 
the same year that bore witness in Spain to the popularity 
of Montemayor's story. The novel of Longus, in spite of 
the attention it received from humanists and admirers of 
classical antiquity, did not modify at all in renascent Europe 
the trend of pastoral writing. It was too simple, too calm, 
too unromantic, to appeal to the warriors of Henry IV. or 
the navigators of Queen Elizabeth. Their adventuresome 
spirit longed for reflections of active life, for the joy and the 



282 MONTE MA YOR'S DIANA. 

melancholy of emotional shepherds, while their curiosity in 
the real identity of the fictitious characters of the modern 
pastoral made the loves and disdains of these characters 
the more attractive to them. 

In the matter of emphasizing passion and emotion the 
Italian and Spanish pastoral authors had worked together. 
Boccaccio had shown the way to the more modern senti- 
ment of Sannazaro, while in Tasso and Guarini it is the 
human heart as it beat in Italy of the decadence, which 
sings of its deceptions in love. The Spaniards of the 
sixteenth century had no tradition of antiquity to strug- 
gle against They presented only the modern side of indi- 
vidual feeling from the very beginning of their pastoral 
work. So in the combined result of the two literatures on 
the tendency of their French imitations, the Italian and 
Spanish were united in the warmth of their emotion as con- 
trasted with the cold analysis of the Greek rhetoricians. 
But when it came to the style of their work and its plan the 
moderns fell apart. The lack of a definite central idea in 
the Arcadia rendered it powerless as a literary model among 
the logical writers of France. Its plot was not sufficiently 
developed and its episodes were held together only by the 
merest thread. On the other hand, Diana, with all its 
faults, was a story which had some necessary connection 
between its parts ; and by the merits of its literary structure 
its deficiencies of style, when compared with the brilliant 
periods of the Arcadia, were in great measure atoned for. 
Accordingly, when both pastoral schools appealed to the 
favor of a foreign public, it was the more disciplined pro- 
duct of the Spanish mind, which secured the literary 
primacy. 

The great medium through which the novelistic elements 
of Diana were conveyed to our latter-day authors was the 
celebrated novel of Honore D'Urfe, the Astrte. The plan, 
tone, and make-up of the Astree are practically the same as 



MONTEMA YORS DIANA. 283 

those of Diana, and many of the situations and notions of 
the Frenchman are openly borrowed from his Spanish mas- 
ter. And when we take into consideration that the Astree 
not only set free the great stream of French fiction in the 
seventeenth century, but that its melancholy shepherds and 
disdainful shepherdesses controlled the drama of France 
for a time, and set the social fashion of the most influential 
European capital for fifty years and more, we may gain 
some slight idea of the extent of Montemayor's impor- 
tance in the history of modern literature. 

For it did not stop with the career of Corneille and the 
life of Mile, de Scudery. The popularity of literary produc- 
tions in France based on the laws of reason thrust back 
indeed the oncoming tide of sentimentalism, but only for a 
time. And when, after two generations of Cartesianism and 
skepticism, the emotional soul of Jean Jacques Rousseau was 
aroused to action by the kindred sentimentality which went 
out to meet him from the pages of the Astrde, the true career 
of the Spanish pastoral had at last begun. Changes in place 
and changes in social surroundings came in for their share, 
to be sure. Yet after all due allowance has been made for 
different times and different circumstances, it is clear, as a 
matter of literary heredity, that the sentimentality of Diana 
has developed into the sensibility of La Nouvelle Heloise, and 
that the appeal to romantic passion, which was sounded 
from the Tagus to the banks of the Lignon, found its lasting 
echoes among the hills which shut in the blue waters of Lake 
Geneva. The melancholy of Sireno, who loved the wife of 
another, is repeated in the longings of St. Preux and in the 
despair of Werther. While all the heroes of the romantic 
school in literature renew, in their complaints, the refrain 
which wooed in vain the cruel beauties who pastured their 
flocks by the pleasant brooks which watered the tablelands of 
Leon and Castile. v 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PICARESCO NOVEL IN SPAIN. ITS ORIGIN AND EARLY 
CAREER. 

The novelists of the nineteenth century have made the 
public of to-day tolerably familiar with the composition of 
realistic fiction. Since the days of Walter Scott and begin- 
ning with the decline of the romantic school, there is hardly 
a story-writer to be found who is not more or less in har- 
mony with this prevailing fashion. Nor are the reasons for 
this predilection at all obscure. Realism in literature was 
born into the present civilization under the pressure of social 
unrest, and hostility of the lower born toward the former 
ruling classes, as well as from the desire to be true to nature 
and render a literal counterpart of contemporary manners. 
It is to be lamented that caste prejudice has had to do with 
a school of such wide-reaching influence ; for realism, as it 
now stands, is hardly different from pessimism. It is no 
longer a protest against the aristocratic or unreal, but is 
rather a delineation of human helplessness in the conflict of 
mankind with the vices of its surroundings and the certain 
goal of its temporal existence. Hence the rise and progress 
of the school called naturalist, and the striving after the exact 
reproduction in literature of man's physiological environ- 
ment,^ 

There can be very little doubt, however, that these scien- 
tific divagations of fiction' afford for a time a pleasing 
variation from the novelistic reduplication of such exploits 
as are performed by Amadis' descendants, and from the 
constant wailings of the disciples of Sireno and Felismena. 

2 8 4 



THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 285 

Yet there are limits set to the charms of realism, as well 
as to the allurements of fantasy, and in the long run the 
latter seems to endure better than its rival. For the world 
is not so generously responsive to its children who demand 
from it both living and recreation, as to induce them to 
while away their leisure hours in reviewing their own strug- 
gles here below, and reflecting that the end thereof is 
physical death. The school in fiction which dwells on the 
hardships of humanity may gain, by its talent and art, a 
comparatively abiding welcome with that portion of the 
public which possesses an educated taste, but it will never 
succeed, even in the height of its celebrity, in winning to 
itself the majority of novel readers. The crowd demands 
pleasure from its books, and when the authors who can 
rightly lay claim to style and composition fail to bring on 
oblivion of its daily routine, it turns without any com- 
punction to second-rate compilers. The content and not 
the form is the essential thing to the great majority. Or 
more correctly it is the spirit of the content. We are there- 
fore at all times confronted with the fact that the sales of 
novels furnish a reliable indication of the true feeling of 
humanity. And they show that the people at large is 
always hopeful, believes in itself always, and in its own 
progress, and that discouragement in regard to the present, 
or despair for the future, is ever confined to a limited circle 
of the select few. 

For this vital reason the ideal novel has always been both 
the pioneer and the favorite type of fiction. Walter Scott 
appeals to a wider circle than Thackeray, and not for his 
theme alone, but for the manner of treating his theme. 
And if we go back to our own particular province, and com- 
pare the relative popularity of the various kinds of novels 
in the sixteenth century, we can easily understand the last- 
ing supremacy of the romance of chivalry over its rivals. It 
alone was hopeful. The most successful of the pastorals 



286 THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 

was sad in tone, if ideal in conception, and when the writers 
of the pastoral related events taken from life they became 
realistic, however perfect their rustic disguise might be. So 
their works soon passed away, and left vacant places to be 
quickly filled by the avowed tales of actual experience. 

The wonderful creative energy of the Spanish mind had 
not been wholly exhausted, then, by the formation of the 
romance of chivalry and the pastoral novel. It still retained 
of its great capacity for romancing sufficient force to pro- 
duce perhaps its most important invention. For the story 
it tells of the struggles for existence of the impoverished 
descendants of the warriors of Ferdinand, or the compan- 
ions of Pizarro, has lived longer than all its accounts of 
glory or despairing love. The hero of the new episode is 
not a knight but a plebeian. His morals are those of a 
rogue or sharper, and from his Spanish title of picaro the 
term " picaresco " has been applied to the narrative of his 
achievements. These were mainly in the line of his getting 
on in the world, his knavery or villainy, his attempts to 
cheat or steal, his cringing and bullying, until after years of 
hardship and mental exertion he has acquired a sufficient 
competency or position in the community to be able to 
repose from his cares, and find leisure to intrust to the world 
the account of his successful devices. 

'It is therefore evident that the first purely realistic novel 
was ushered into existence under the most untoward aus- 
pices. It did not profess from the start to describe life in 
its general relations, but only the rascally side of life. It 
was a novel of character perhaps, or rather of the deceit 
which can be made to predominate in a low character, and 
it was also a novel of manners in its description of the 
various classes of people through which our rogue threaded 
his devious way. It is something like the pastoral in its 
directness of appeal, but it is openly autobiographical, 
instead of being transparently so. In its material, however, 



THE PICARESCO NOVEL. 287 

it is much more original than its predecessors, and is wholly 
and entirely Spanish, though of course Renaissance rascals 
were by no means confined to Spain. It did not go outside 
of the peninsula into the literature of other nations to seek 
for the contents of its plot. It relied on observation for its 
subject-matter, and it discarded whatever could not come 
into the field of ordinary existence. There is no element 
of magic or the supernatural in the picaresco novel, even 
in such a small dose as the personal pastoral itself allowed. 

The invention of the picaresco novel pleases our idea 
of symmetry, for it completed the circle of novelistic action. 
Following the imaginative stories of an ideal society based 
on feudalism, and accompanying the half allegorical, half 
real narratives of pastoral life which verged closely on the 
portrayal of real events,Uhere was still a place for a series 
of fictitious events, which should be the direct reflection, or 
the exact impression, of the occurrences taking place in 
hard, practical, every-day existence^ Unfortunately, how- 
ever, these reflections and imprints were colored by personal 
and class feeling, and conveyed to the public, which found 
itself concerned in them, only a partial representation of the 
actual surroundings. The picaresco novel sees only the life 
which the more discontented and ambitious members of the 
middle classes saw ; \the struggle to rise in a period of gen- 
eral decline, the fight to get on in the world, to gain wealth, 
or to keep it when once acquired?) These first examples of 
realistic writing marked out the way to be followed by the 
subsequent productions of the school ; and it is the evil in 
the world which forms the principal theme of the continental 
Le Sages, Balzacs, and Tolstois. In England alone with 
Fielding and with Thackeray — the truly realistic novelist — 
do we find a fairly complete picture of the triumphs as well 
as the trials of humanity. 

But from the very fact that the realistic authors of Spain 
in the sixteenth century forced on their readers the painful 



2 88 THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 

side of human experience, their works did not become 
numerous or popular in the usual sense of the word. It was 
only the unfortunate in ambition, those who were conscious 
of being defrauded by society, that defended a literature of 
discouragement. The upper classes of the social structure, 
whose wealth remained an occasion of continual self-satisfac- 
tion to themselves, or those whose birth, though not attended 
by riches, was exalted enough to receive the adulation of 
plebeian prosperity, these happy beings never lent a willing 
ear to the laments of the poor and the restless. On the 
other hand the great majority of mankind, without social 
aspirations, intent alone on inexpensive pleasures, is rarely, if 
ever, affected by the bitterness which periodically pervades 
the class between the people and the aristocracy. The 
masses of a nation do not believe in man's defeat in 
his conflict with nature. Hope never leaves them ; even 
when in a time of national decadence the whole social 
fabric above them is wrapped in gloom. Consequently, a 
literature of despair is never found in chapbooks, and the 
descriptions of failures, without final rewards here below, 
have no market with what wecall the people and with the 
trading class which has sprung from the people. 

Still we are aware that the history of fiction testifies to 
a steady demand for what is termed realistic writing. That 
demand is not dependent on fashion like the pastoral novel, 
for it has a lasting body of supporters ; but it nevertheless 
increases in extent, or decreases, according as the class 
which sees in it the reflection of its feelings, absorbs the 
upper stratum of society, as in a time of general unrest, or 
shrinks to the restricted numbers of those who are peren- 
nially discontented. This last was the state of the case in 
Spain under Philip II. The combination of the disap- 
pointed had become strong enough to make itself heard, but 
it had not, as in the seventeenth century, won over to its 
ranks the larger part of the educated and refined. There- 



THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 289 

fore two picaresco novels only come within the scope of 
this history. 

The origin of the picaresco novel appears to be the same 
as that of satire in general. It was evidently a protest 
against the prevailing style of literature, which in the 
romances of chivalry showed an utter disregard for the real 
condition of the Spanish nation, by celebrating only the 
deeds of the one class in feudal society, the nobility. In 
the career of the picaro, the despised third estate avenged 
itself for the successes of Amadis and Palmerin. The 
appearance of Lazarillo de Tormes was a direct challenge 
to the eulogists of vanished knight-errantry. Instead of a 
hero urged on by love and loyalty to win fame by the 
strength of his arm and the generosity of his mind, the 
Spanish public was invited to compare such a career with 
the actual adventures of any rascal taken from among the 
common herd, while personal observation was appealed to 
in the question of deciding which life was borne out by the 
facts, and which was not. In other words the picaresco 
novel was not only a study of a rascal, but it was, besides, 
a protest against the predominance in literature of the aris- 
tocratic type. In carrying its hostility to the romances of 
chivalry so far as an entire forgetfulness of their spirit, the 
insurgent went to the other extreme, and busied itself with 
portraying the exact opposite of the manners and ideals of 
a true and perfect knight. And undoubtedly this feeling 
of revenge and irony made the heroes of realism from the 
very start the embodiment of all that is mean and crafty. 

But there is also in these presentations of the people's 
cause a more noble sentiment than that of mere revenge. 
It is the sense of indignation, which must have moved just 
hearts at the blindness of the popular literature for the true 
condition of the country, at the endless repetition of jousts 
and campaigns in which geographical Spain even was hardly 
ever in question. True patriotism might have inspired 



290 THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 

a wholesome delineation of the virtues and vices of the 
nation, its misfortunes, and the elements out of which regen- 
eration should come. But in the bitterness of class resent- 
ment the virtues were strikingly absent, and the vices 
occupy the foreground of the picture ; and so, by insisting 
on the characteristics of the dark side of life, and in hold- 
ing up before man the reflection of his sorrows without a 
corresponding view of his happinesses, the realistic novel 
failed to fulfill its true mission. It satirized, to be sure, 
the disdain of the romances of chivalry for the actual con- 
dition of Spanish life, but in its championship of the weak 
and suffering it omitted to defend the nobler instincts of 
man, and therefore it has remained in the history of litera- 
ture as an exponent of but half the truth, and that half the 
less inspiring portion of the whole. 

The example thus set by the picaresco novelist has been 
only too often followed by the realistic authors of all later 
fiction, though the claim that half the truth in art is better 
than no truth at all is amply borne out by the fact, that the 
two picaresco novels of the sixteenth century are the only 
examples of all the many romances of that time which can 
be read at the present day for themselves alone. For they 
are sketches of human nature, not fanciful outlines of a 
non-existent society. And through this quality they appeal 
to our lasting sympathy. 

The causes which produced the picaj-esco novel have 
already been suggested as connected with the circumstances 
of the Spanish people at the end of the reign of Charles V. 
Long before the appearance of realistic fiction the social 
conditions necessary to its existence had all been evolved. 
The fifteenth century saw the decline of the nobility in 
France, and the rise of the third estate and the monarchy, 
its natural ally. But in Spain the forays against the Moors 
had kept alive the institutions of feudalism long after they 
had passed away in the other countries of Europe. The 



THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 291 

political unity of the nation, completed by the fall of Gra- 
nada, the sudden accession of wealth gained by the discovery 
of America and the plunder of its treasures, speedily changed 
the relations which had hitherto been preserved in the 
society of the peninsula, and assimilated them to those pre- 
vailing elsewhere. It was on the eve of this sudden trans- 
formation that the glorification of feudalism, which had so 
long lingered among the traditions of the people, took on a 
literary form. The romances of chivalry dwelt wholly on 
idealized memories, and drew their material from a state of 
affairs which had definitely passed away. Yet the brilliant 
achievements of the Spanish soldier and navigator, the ex- 
ploits of Gonsalvo de Cordova in Italy, and the extension 
of Spanish rule under the great emperor who represented, 
in his generous character and chivalrous spirit, the true 
notion of a paladin, rather added to the favor which the 
eulogies of knight-errantry had already obtained, and pro- 
longed their popularity for another generation. Not until 
these temporal glories had faded, and the last of the knights- 
errant had prepared himself to own to the world his own 
disappointment by a romantic abdication of all his sove- 
reignty, did those whose eyes were not blinded by this out- 
ward display of power and prosperity venture to challenge 
in fiction the magnifiers of feudalism, and oppose to the 
gallantry of an impossible nobility the complaints and misery 
of the despairing inhabitants of contemporaneous Spain. 

It is in studying the history of the country under its most 
brilliant monarch that we may easily trace the genesis of the 
ficaro. The reign of Charles had begun shortly after the 
nation had tasted the pleasures of foreign conquests. The 
extent and location of his possessions added greatly to the 
territory to be defended by Spanish arms, while also increas- 
ing the renown of the Spanish name. In the changes of 
European warfare induced by the increasing employment of 
firearms, the relative importance of the foot soldier to the 



292 THE PICA R E SCO NOVEL. 

horseman had rapidly grown, and had opened the door to 
promotion in the ranks. As soon as the opportunities of 
the meanest private to win fame and gain riches became 
known to the Spanish people, the whole male population of 
the peninsula swarmed into the armies. The success across 
the ocean of Cortez and Pizarro, and the magnificence and 
power they displayed before their astonished countrymen, 
aroused the cupidity of the humblest peasant. It was to 
be expected that the sight of such rewards for valor and 
boldness, placed with little regard to birth or rank within the 
reach of the persevering and audacious, should upturn the 
whole social fabric of the nation. The poorest laborer saw 
in a military career the way to social advancement, and the 
basest deckhand beheld in the Spanish Main the pathway 
to fortune. As a consequence of these enticements the 
ordinary callings of peaceful life were abandoned by their 
followers. Toil, so slow to be recompensed, was despised, 
and even the walks of industry were neglected for the more 
especial development of maritime commerce. 

The effects of such a universal withdrawal from the shop 
and the farm were soon felt in the scarcity of the comforts 
and even the necessaries of life. But the results were not 
appreciated so long as the armies and the fleets continued 
to absorb all the able-bodied men of both city and country. 
It was only when the wars in Europe grew less frequent, 
and exploration in East and West had garnered its best 
harvests, that the conditions of life at home became evident 
to the returning warrior and mariner. Not so much that 
they found nothing to do, but that they had become unwill- 
ing to do it. His active life in camp and on sea had weaned 
the average man of all interest in more settled pursuits. 
Manual labor these conquerors of the world despised, and 
the country therefore was filled with idlers — drawn from 
the petty nobility as well as from the third estate — who had 
not acquired in their career abroad the means of future 



THE PICARESCO NOVEL. 293 

support. Still they had to live, and the only resource left 
to them by their pride was their wits. Thus we find in 
Spain in the closing years of Charles V. a class of sharpers 
by no means few in numbers, who, by flattery of the rich 
and deception of the stupid, sought to gain by mental effort 
alone a sufficient livelihood. In no country, perhaps, at 
least in modern times, have been seen so many parasites and 
rascals as in Castile at the middle of the sixteenth century. 
Their perseverance in vagabondage, and their ingenuity in 
wheedling, well merited to be handed down to posterity 
in the most popular form of fiction. But from taking cog- 
nizance of such rabble, surely the romance of chivalry and 
the pastoral story may plead to be excused. 

The wars abroad and the marauding expeditions by sea 
had not only unfitted the poorer classes of the Spanish 
nation for humdrum labor, but had also demanded for their 
maintenance a continual drain on the national wealth. To 
make headway against this demand, the people relied not 
on a corresponding development of home industries, but on 
the vast amounts of gold and silver which were being poured 
so freely into the country from its possessions in America. 
Yet such accession of currency soon raised the price of the 
necessaries of life without contributing in any way to their 
increase. To meet the growing expenses of the government 
taxes were planned, which meant in those days a forced levy 
on the peasants and farmers. These cultivators of the soil, 
being unable, from the nature of their occupation, to escape 
the eye of the collector, found themselves wholly at the 
mercy of the assessor, and were often forced to hand over 
the assumed value of their crops before the latter were even 
harvested. So a first consequence of this new departure in 
Spain was deserted farms. To add to these conditions of 
material distress, a shortsighted administration established 
between the individual provinces a system of tariffs, which 
completed the ruin of husbandry, and ended in the sur- 



294 THE PICARESCO NOVEL. 

render of whole districts to the more merciful protection of 
nature. And in the Spain of the Empire, that favored 
country oppressed with glory and filled with gold, famine 
stalked abroad relentless. Bread became more precious 
than jewels, and hunger is the main thought of Lazarillo de 
Tor?nes. 

To this lack of the common necessities of life the sense of 
the insecurity of person was a further aggravation. The 
Inquisition, which at first had been used as a power against 
the Moorish infidels, had been kept by the government as a 
useful civil auxiliary, and was now turned loose upon the 
loyal subjects of the realm. Its methods of secrecy in 
arrest, trial, and imprisonment gradually undermined in the 
minds of the common citizen all notions of law and justice. 
Spies were everywhere, and the daily evidences of their 
subtle activity gave each man good reason to look upon his 
neighbor as a possible informer against him. Thus the 
foundations of friendship were destroyed by mutual suspi- 
cion and each man lived unto himself. It behooved every- 
one to look closely to his own interests, to disregard the 
claims of others, to show to misfortune no pity, and to suf- 
fering no charity, under penalty of incurring the vengeance 
of his unknown masters, whose victim he might be thus 
aiding. That this statement is no exaggeration the legisla- 
tive enactments of these decades survive as a living testi- 
mony. It is on record that assistance for the poor and 
unfortunate was furnished only by the lowest classes of the 
community, who alone had nothing to fear for themselves 
either in property or in person. The results of this repres- 
sion of the sympathetic side of man were seen in the propor- 
tionate development of hardheartedness and cruelty, and in 
the manifold manifestation of these vices. Indifference to 
the common ties of humanity went hand in hand with fatal- 
ism in religion. To souls, which were steeled against all 
compassion for their fellow-beings, laughter and tears had 



THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 295 

no meaning, or meant one and the same thing. Every man 
for himself became the motto of Spain in the highest period 
of her military greatness, and every man for himself is the 
spirit of the picaresco novel. The struggle for existence is 
no recent theme for literature. 

It is possible that this new kind of fiction was also a vent 
for the bitterness of discontent, which a despotic adminis- 
tration would not allow to be expressed in other and more 
active ways. And if so, then allowances must be made for 
this repression, which would only accentuate the evil traits 
of the picture which it draws. Yet after all due reserva- 
tions, enough is still left in the picaresco novels to give us a 
good idea of the existence they pretend to portray. They 
must have been true in the main, else they would not have 
outlived the contempt of their public. They professedly 
rely for their material on observation of their surroundings 
and the study of contemporaneous manners, and they do 
not appeal in any way to the traditions of the people or the 
favor of an imported literary fashion. They are original 
and they are indigenous, and previous novelistic accumula- 
tions have very little to do with their make-up. Grant the 
picaresco writer his theme, the material on which he works 
must be of his own finding. This would not, of course, 
preclude all suggestions which the novelist may have ob- 
tained from outside sources, but it would oblige him to adapt 
any such suggestions to the situation which he is intent upon 
describing. 

It is probable, with these conditions in view, that the first 
picaresco novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, was influenced in 
certain episodes by antecedent literature, and that its open- 
ing chapters may furnish us with a clew as to the kind of 
literature which was thus laid under contribution. The 
subject of these chapters is a description of the practical 
jokes which a boy guide plays on his blind master, and the 
various punishments he receives for his labors. Similar 



296 THE PIC A RE SCO NOVEL. 

themes were no strangers to the literature of Europe from 
its earliest origins, and the tricks of young Lazarillo were 
invented long before his time by the purveyors to the popu- 
lar amusements of the Middle Ages. 

For in that golden age of romantic literature human infir- 
mities, and particularly deformities of the body, were looked 
upon as punishments decreed from on high for sin. And 
this view of man's physical weaknesses lasted through the 
whole period of the Renaissance down to the eighteenth 
century. Therefore, to our forefathers the conclusion was 
obvious, that those persons upon whom Heaven had set a 
seal of condemnation should not receive the pity and 
charity natural to true believers, but that the divine judg- 
ments should be ratified on earth by the ridicule and cruelty 
of the faithful. In obedience to this pious sentiment the 
lame and the blind became in literature, as well as in real 
life, the legitimate objects of derision. Especially was this 
the case with the most popular literature, the drama. The 
mediaeval stage of France, which set the fashion for the 
secular playwrights of Europe previous to the revival of 
learning, developed a whole series of plays in verse, based 
on the mental and bodily shortcomings of its characters. 
These plays were known by the name of farces. Many of 
them were merely samples of buffoonery and coarseness, 
resembling very strongly the tavern anecdotes of the 
present day. Not a few, however, showed genuine wit, 
though not of the most refined type, and a degree of literary 
merit which has preserved them from the general destruc- 
tion experienced by their fellows. All of these survivals 
belong to the fifteenth century, with one exception. And 
it is a curious fact that this exception, a French farce, 
played at Tournai, not far from the year 1277, should have 
the same subject as the first episode of Lazai-illo de Tonnes. 
The preservation of this piece furnishes quite a conclusive 
proof of the popularity of its subject, and its appearance in 



THE PICARESCO NOVEL. 297 

Spanish fiction 275 years later testifies to the universality 
of its application. 

This old Flemish story of The Boy and the Blind Man 
begins with an appeal of the beggar to the passers-by, and 
the invocation of blessings on the heads of those who make 
substantial responses to this appeal. But the blind man has 
as yet no guide, so laments for his helplessness follow close 
on his benedictions. As he moves along he wanders from 
the way, and only after some inconvenience to himself is he 
brought back into the road by a boy who happens to meet 
him. This kind attention results in an offer from the beg- 
gar to hire the boy to lead him to Tournai and help him 
beg in that town. After some parleying the boy agrees to 
a bargain, and they unite their efforts to get alms by sing- 
ing. But music has no charms for the charitable people of 
that region, and the boy, growing weary of his task, sud- 
denly finds an imperative reason for a short absence. 
When he comes back, however, he steals up behind his 
blind master and deals him a staggering thwack, without 
awakening his suspicion. A few minutes later the boy 
reveals his presence, and the beggar complains to him 
about the blow he had received. Further dialogue between 
the two conspirators leads to a commission given the boy to 
buy food. For this purpose the blind man hands over his 
purse to his able assistant ; but when the rogue has it once 
safely in his grasp he reviles the beggar in the choicest 
terms of his vocabulary, and makes off with the money, to 
the undoubted delectation and approval of the honest 
burghers of Flanders. The scene ends with the promise 
to the boy of a sound thrashing if his master ever catches 
him again. 

Belgium and Spain were farther apart in the thirteenth 
century than they are to-day, but there was nothing to pre- 
vent the cross-road jugglers from peddling their tricks, 
and such simple plays as they chose, all over Europe. And 



298 THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 

though we have no evidence of the presence of farces in the 
Spanish literature of the Middle Ages, it is probable that 
this little drama, and many others like it, were being per- 
formed in the peninsula daily without ever rising to the 
dignity of a literary mention. At all events, the union of 
Spain with the Netherlands at the accession of Charles V., 
and the inroads of Spanish soldiers and traders into the 
latter country, must have made many of the invaders familiar 
with the scenic amusements of the market-places of the 
North. And the rapidity of the literary communication 
between the two countries is evident from the publication 
of Lazarillo de Tonnes itself, which for a long time was 
attributed to the presses of Antwerp, although it is now 
quite certain that a printer of Burgos, in Spain, first issued 
it. Yet, the Antwerp publisher lagged behind him a few 
months only. 

The origin of the opening incidents of our novel cannot 
be limited to the popularity of the one farce cited, since 
many others must have treated the same subject, varied the 
tricks of the boy, and narrated the revenge of the blind man. 
While there is no direct evidence in literature that such was 
the case, an interesting piece of indirect testimony has 
recently come to light in connection with a Latin manu- 
script preserved in the British Museum. The margins of 
this manuscript were filled up with sketches of scenes taken 
from the popular literature of the time, the larger part of 
which were made in England. Among them are several 
illustrations of the boy and blind beggar cycle of plays, thus 
testifying to the existence of more than one farce dealing 
with the subject, and also the widespread favor which they 
had attained. These particular drawings belong to the first 
part of the fourteenth century, and already anticipate some 
of the stratagems of the Spanish picaro of the sixteenth, as 
well as the floggings which reward his ingenuity. The most 
celebrated is perhaps the scene where the boy, standing near 



THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 299 

his master, is busily sucking the wine from the latter's jar 
through a hollow reed, a trick which Lazaruco de Tormes 
has absorbed bodily. Seeing, then, that the material of the 
first few chapters of the novel resembles so strongly certain 
episodes of previous farces, we are quite safe in drawing 
the conclusion, that the author of this first prose narrative of 
actual life had borrowed from the stage certain incidents 
adaptable to the general trend of his plan, and which had 
the further advantage of being familiar to his readers. So, 
after all, a moderate amount of foreign matter, and more 
exactly some elements of French invention, entered into the 
composition of the picaresco novel of Spain. 

Lazarillo de Tormes is anonymous. For some time its 
authorship was assigned to the great noble, Hurtado de 
Mendoza, but there is nothing to show he had anything to 
do with its contents. On the contrary, the spirit of the 
book would point to some discontented member of the mid- 
dle class, who did not sign his work, either through fear of 
the Inquisition or because he looked on it as of no literary 
import. The latter theory might receive support from the 
extent of the novel, which is of ridiculous size compared 
with its rivals of' the Amadis and Palmerin family. The 
experience of little Lazarus fills, indeed, hardly fifty pages 
of ordinary print, and might therefore be more appropriately 
termed a story than a novel, were it not for its great signifi- 
cance in the history of fiction. But it proved to be a David 
among Goliaths. At the first stone from its satirical sling 
the gigantic shapes of the knights-errant staggered and fell, 
to rise no more. 

The date of the publication of Lazarillo de Tormes is 
undoubtedly the year 1554, hard on the approaching abdi- 
cation of Charles. In that year it went through two editions 
in Spain, and one, at least, in Flanders. Whether it had 
existed previously in manuscript for any length of time is 
not known. But probably not, since the state of affairs it 



3°° THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 

depicts could hardly have developed in the early years of 
the great emperor, and even after they had become general 
some time must have elapsed before the Spanish public 
would have allowed them to be openly disclosed to the 
world. 

The novel, being short, contains only four detailed epi- 
sodes. The incident of the boy and the blind beggar we 
have already cited. The second episode is Lazaro's expe- 
rience with a priest, the third his service with a decayed 
nobleman, and the fourth his connection with a seller of 
indulgences. Thus all classes of Spain, but the commercial, 
were levied on, and their traits faithfully handed down to 
posterity. The bourgeoisie was spared, perhaps out of the 
caste feeling of our anonymous observer, for his successors 
do not hesitate to hold the merchants and traders up to 
derision, together with the clergy, nobility, and common 
people. Another reservation also as to the complete orig- 
inality of the novel, and its independence of outside influ- 
ences, may be made in the matter of the last episode 
mentioned, which had been told before in Masuccio's collec- 
tion of Italian stories, II Novellino, in that division where 
the roguery and the mishaps of monks are narrated. But 
the remaining two adventures of the youthful picaro are 
wholly Spanish, and are exact reproductions of the manners 
and condition of the upper classes, and of their continual 
struggle against hunger, the " evil of Spain." 

The story of Lazarillo de Tonnes is told in the first person 
by the hero, and runs as follows : He was born in a mill on 
the river Tormes, near Salamanca. His early life was event- 
ful, in that his father did not long escape the gallows, and his 
mother was compelled to earn her livelihood in Salamanca, 
where she first boarded students, who attended the univer- 
sity in that town, and took in washing. In this career she 
did not prosper overmuch, and was finally forced to enter 
domestic service. At this crisis she surrenders her boy, 



THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 3 01 

Lazaro, now entering on the tenth year of his age, to a blind 
beggar, in search of a guide, who promises to be a father to 
the child. With him our hero makes his start in active life, 
and begins his getting of worldly wisdom. For at the very 
instant of their leaving the town, as the blind man and his 
guide are passing over the bridge, which was ornamented 
with the figure of a stone bull, Lazaro takes his first lesson 
in human experience : 

" ' Lazaro,' said my master to me, * put your ear against 
this bull and you will hear within a great noise.' In my 
simplicity I approached, thinking it to be as he said, and 
when he felt that I had my head close to the stone he put 
strength into his hand and gave me a great thump against 
the devilish bull, so that the pain of the bunting lasted me 
for more than three days. And then he said to me : 
' Dunce, learn that the servant of a blind man must give 
points to the Devil.' And he laughed heartily at his great 
joke. And at that instant it seemed to me that I awoke 
from the innocence in which, as a child, I had been sleep- 
ing, and I said to myself : ' He speaks the truth, and it 
behooves me to keep my eyes open and to plan, since I am 
alone, how I may get on in the world.' " And wide open 
his eyes were ever after. 

Lazaro and the beggar, than whom " since God created 
the world no one was more astute and shrewd," wandered 
over Spain, getting their living as best they could. The 
blind man knew by heart a hundred prayers and made 
the churches resound with them, " having an humble and 
devout countenance, which was well composed when he 
prayed, not making gestures or faces or screwing up his 
mouth or eyes, as others are wont to do." He was also a 
soothsayer and knew many charms and incantations, and in 
the matter of medicine, "Galen did not know the half he 
did." His remedies were simple and fitted to all troubles : 
" Do this, do that, gather such an herb, dig up such a 



3°2 THE PICARESCO NOVEL. 

root," rarely failed to work a cure, and the women looked 
on him as all-wise. But notwithstanding the rewards which 
such talents obtained, Lazaro got very little for his share of 
the spoil. An empty stomach was his lot until it kindly 
sharpened his wits, without which, he says, " I had many 
times died of hunger ; for with all his skill and cunning, I 
countermined him in such a manner that always, or most 
often, I got the greater and the better share." The blind 
man kept his provisions in a canvas bag, securely locked, 
but hunger showed the boy how to rip a seam and thus 
obtain not only bread but also " many good bits, ham and 
sausage." From attacking his master's larder the want of 
food drove Lazaro to intercept his income : " All the money 
I could beg or steal I changed into half-pieces of silver, and 
when he was asked to pray, and they would give him a 
whole piece, because he was devoid of sight he did not seem 
to notice me when I threw it into my mouth and had the 
half ready. And suddenly, when he extended his hand, his 
money went into it, diminished by my change to half its 
real worth." However, the blind man suspected his guide 
of cutting off his revenue, but yet could revenge him- 
self only by giving to his clients half the quantity of 
prayers. 

In the same way Lazaro invented devices for satisfying 
his thirst. Finding that his wine diminished while he was 
eating (Lazaro sucking it up through a straw as in the illus- 
tration in the manuscript), the beggar held the jar between 
his legs. But now the boy lay down and tapped the bottom 
of the vessel, thus causing the liquid to drop slowly into his 
mouth. The hole made in this way he filled up every time 
with wax. But the crafty beggar had his suspicions and 
awaited his vengeance. One day, while the boy is gulping 
down the precious fluid drop by drop, the earthen jar is 
dashed down violently into his face, breaking his teeth, 
knocking him senseless, and filling his flesh with the broken 



THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 303 

scales of its glazed surface. From this moment war is 
openly declared. The boy plots revenge and the master 
loads him with blows. When bystanders remonstrate, they 
are gained over to the beggar's side by the story of the 
wine. Yet the boy is still the guide and he leads his master 
through the roughest paths, where he stumbles and is 
bruised ; and so the honors of deceit and violence remain 
about evenly divided. One day, for instance, an overripe 
bunch of grapes was given the beggar, and he proposed to 
eat it one grape for another with Lazaro, to which the 
latter agreed : " But straightway at the second turn the 
traitor changed his intention, and began to pick them two 
by two, thinking I would do the same. Since I saw him 
break the bargain I did not stop with picking the same 
number as he, but I picked two by two, three by three, as 
fast as I could eat. The bunch finished he remained a 
moment with the stem in his hand, and shaking his head 
said : ' Lazaro, you have deceived me. I will swear that 
you have eaten the grapes three by three.' ' I did not,' 
said I, ' but why do you suspect it ? ' This most amusing 
blind man answered : ' Do you know how I perceive that 
you ate them three by three ? Because I ate them two by 
two and you said nothing.' " 

But Lazaro's initiation into the struggle for existence was 
nearing its end. One day he stole from his master's plate 
a sausage, leaving in its place a turnip. The substitution 
was too evident, and the beggar, seizing the boy, forced 
open his mouth and endeavored to scent the sausage. Over- 
come by the pain, Lazaro vomits his meal into the blind 
man's face, as did Sancho Panza afterward while inves- 
tigating the loss of Don Quixote's teeth. Infuriated by this 
contumely, the beggar pounds and beats the boy most 
savagely, and his life is saved only by the arrival of people 
attracted by the noise. After careful nursing Lazaro comes 
back to his bondage again, but his torn scalp and lacerated 



304 THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 

flesh serve to strengthen his resolution to first pay back his 
master and then make good his escape. 

One day they had been begging under a gateway, and 
when night came on the beggar wished to return to the inn. 
But they had to cross a brook which had been swollen by 
steady rains. Under pretext of finding a place where they 
may jump the stream, Lazaro leads his charge into the 
public square, places him in front of a stone post, and saying 
that here the brook was narrow, bids him jump, leaping 
forward first himself. The blind man retreated a step to 
gather headway, and then threw himself with all his might, 
and dashed his head against the post, which resounded as 
loudly as though it had been hit with a big gourd, and fell 
back half dead and with his head split open ! " ' How did 
you smell the sausage and not the post ? Smell ! smell ! ' 
said I to him, and I left him in the hands of the crowd 
which was running up to his assistance. . . . Never did I 
know what God did with him, nor did I wish to know." 

With this last act of revolting cruelty the first episode of 
Lazarillo de Tormes is brought to an end. Of course it 
would be unjust to consider the reciprocal brutality of the 
beggar and his guide a fair picture of the humanity of the age 
and people. Their vengeances were undoubtedly extreme 
examples, such as all realistic fiction since their day seems 
bound to select. Yet the spirit which animates the actors 
in these scenes, the utter selfishness, the entire absence of 
pity, and the vices excited in man by the fierce gnawings of 
hunger, may be taken as fairly illustrative of the attitude of 
the Spanish nation in its period of distress. When we admit 
that our first and overpowering instinct is the one of self- 
preservation, we cannot wonder greatly at its activity among 
the lower classes of an impoverished people. 

How far this necessity of self-preservation extended under 
the pressure of the extreme want of the nation, is seen in 
the next picture of our novel, which presents, in a way, 



THE PICARESCO NOVEL. 305 

•* 

scenes from clerical life. When Lazaro escapes from his 
first master he turns beggar himself without meeting with 
any considerable success. So after a while he hires out to 
a priest as acolyte, on the theory that priests live well, and 
their attendants must therefore be above suffering. But 
famine had entered the service of the Church before Lazaro, 
and the boy soon finds that nothing has been gained by his 
change of employers : " For the blind man, in comparison 
with this one, was an Alexander the Great [who was the 
mediaeval type of liberality] compared with avarice itself." 
All eatables in the clergy-house were kept in a strong box, 
under lock and key, and were doled out so sparingly that 
Lazaro found an onion once in four days was to be his 
piece de resistance. When the priest dined he generously 
threw the bones of his meat to the boy, saying to him, 
" ' Take, eat, triumph, for the earth is yours ; you fare 
better than the Pope.'" 

After three weeks of such nourishment the bodily strength 
of the acolyte was at a low ebb. His very knees hardly 
supported him as he stood. To steal the alms of the devout 
from the plate at the offertory was impossible under the 
scrutiny of his watchful master, " whose eyes danced in his 
skull like quicksilver." And the wine which remained from 
communion lasted this prudent householder a week. These 
saving habits would soon have convinced our hero that the 
jolly monks of old feasted only in song, had not weddings 
and funerals intervened to prove that the traditional spirit 
of the priesthood was kept in abeyance only by the constant 
menaces of famine. On such occasions Lazaro was also per- 
mitted to relax from his forced abstinence. " God pardon 
me," he says regretfully, " for never was I an enemy of the 
human race excepting at that time in my life, and then the 
reason was because we ate well and I stuffed myself. For 
then I desired and even prayed to God that each day might 
have its victim. And when we administered the sacrament 



306 THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 

to the sick, especially when we gave extreme unction, . . . 
I asked the Lord with all my heart and will . . . that he 
would take them from the world. When anyone of them 
escaped — God pardon me for it — but I gave him to the 
devil a thousand times, while he who died received from 
me the more abundant blessings." But twenty deaths in 
six months, and the consequent funeral feasts, barely kept 
the young acolyte from utter starvation, while the severity 
of his continual fasting became all the more sensible after 
these occasional banquets. Still he had no desire to leave 
this new position of his, not only because he had become 
too weak to walk any distance, but also because he feared 
he might fall into even worse hands. 

Yet his hunger must be relieved, and he soon hit upon an 
expedient to that end. By wheedling a carpenter he 
obtained a second key to the blessed bread-box, and now 
could satisfy, though sparingly, his supreme cravings. In 
spite of his self-denial, however, the priest began to miss his 
loaves, and Lazaro found himself reduced to the consola- 
tion of an optical meal, by "unlocking the chest and gazing 
on that ' face of God,' as the children say." And so he 
fasted until Heaven suggested to this pious rascal a new 
device, which in its turn finally betrayed him, and the priest 
in anger discharged his assistant, who was thus launched 
again on the sea of adventure. 

He journeys toward Toledo, that pride of old Spain, and 
looks about him, as he goes, in quest of a new employer. 
One day his diligent search is rewarded, and in the streets 
of the noble town our picaro meets with a Spanish squire, 
" who was going along the way, respectably dressed, well- 
combed, his gait and bearing correct. He looked at me 
and I at him and he said : i Boy, are you looking for a 
master ? ' I said to him : ' Yes, sir,' ' Then come behind 
me,' he replied, * for God has shown you grace in meeting 
me ; you have surely prayed some good prayer to-day.' " 



THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 3° 7 

It was early in the morning and the squire continued his 
walk, followed by his new domestic. At eleven o'clock they 
entered a church and took part in the service. At its close, 
with the same measured step and proud carriage, the hidalgo 
again took up his promenade about the town. But in pass- 
ing the markets never a purchase did he make. At the 
stroke of one he returned home, took off his cape, folded it 
carefully, and sitting down on a stone bench, after blowing 
the dust from it, he began to question Lazaro, who was now 
nearly famished. The house was silent, without furniture. 
Lazaro looked in vain for a kitchen or a cook, and after a 
long agony the squire told his valet that as he had break- 
fasted he would not dine. Driven to his last ditch our poor 
hero now sorrowfully drew from his bosom some morsels of 
bread, the largest of which his master noticed and appropri- 
ated, after a few courteous remarks. When night came on 
the squire concluded that, on account of thieves and the 
darkness, he would not go out to get provisions. Morning 
dawned. The nobleman arose, dressed himself carefully, 
girded on his sword with many boastings, " and with easy 
step and erect body, making with it and with his head many 
graceful movements, letting the hood of his cape fall on his 
shoulder, and at times on his arm, and placing his right 
hand on his hip, he went out," a genuine Spanish hidalgo, 
who, though driven to the wall by hunger, would not dero- 
gate from the habits of his class one iota, but kept up before 
the crowd the appearances of rank and wealth, while suffer- 
ing continually the keenest of all bodily distresses. And he 
was no exception in the brilliant Spain of Charles V. In 
that devoted land many lords and ladies, clad in silks and 
velvets, sat solitary in their ancestral castles and worshiped 
"God's face," on which they so rarely gazed. But they 
saved their honor, though their body starved. 

Outcast Lazaro had no honor, he. Begging to him was 
far better than starving. Yet he really respected his fam- 



308 THE PICARESCO NOVEL. 

ished master, whom he realized to be of finer mold than him- 
self and never was able to resist the pleadings of his hungry 
eyes. And so the servant became the provider for the 
household, and Lazaro, instead of receiving the support he 
had anticipated, had merely added another empty stomach 
to his own. His diligence in begging was incited by this 
double duty, and for a time he earned the whole fare. But 
a new misfortune came to vex him. The authorities of 
Toledo were forced by the increasing destitution of the com- 
munity to issue a decree against the presence of beggars 
coming from other provinces, and death by starvation men. 
aced the helpless strangers. The charity of some poor silk- 
spinners, who, in contrast with the indifference of the well- 
to-do, divided their scanty earnings with their neighbors, 
saved the valet, but how the spark of life was kept in the 
gaunt body of the master none but himself knew. Every 
day he dressed himself as usual, and promenaded the streets 
of the town, manfully supporting " the curse they call 
honor," — which Lazaro could not understand, yet neverthe- 
less esteemed, — and picking his teeth with one of the few 
straws that still remained in his lodging. But the final 
catastrophe could not be long avoided. One day the land- 
lord came to collect his rent, for the noble also was not a 
citizen of Toledo. The squire has too large a coin for the 
payment. He steps out to change it and never returns. 

It would seem from the style and general tone of these 
three episodes that the object of our novel was already 
attained. It had now placed in detail before its readers 
the wretchedness of those whose physical defects make 
them constant pensioners on the community, together with 
the want of the clergy and the smaller nobility. Care and 
attention had been bestowed by the author upon these 
descriptions in order to make them vivid and lifelike ; and 
after this task was performed his interest in his work 
declined. He had intended to follow up these studies of 



THE PICARESCO NOVEL. 3°9 

types with scenes of a more individual nature, but he him- 
self has become weary of dwelling on the distress of the 
country, and the sketches which are added are made hur- 
riedly, and only in outline. They continue the portrayal of 
the contemporaneous conditions of Spanish life, but they 
lean more and more toward the personal side, being mainly 
concerned with Lazaro's rise in the ways of the world. After 
the disappearance of the squire he took service with a monk, 
who wore him out with his many foragings. Next he assisted 
a seller of indulgences, who testified to the poverty of the 
land, by offering as bribes to the country curates a pear or 
a head of lettuce. This sharper hired a judge to fall into 
convulsions in a church during the service, and then, by 
pretending to cure the supposed invalid, got no small amount 
of money out of the sick people of that place. — This scene 
is probably not original with the author of Lazarillo de 
Tonnes, but is borrowed, most likely, from Masuccio's col- 
lection of stories. 

From the seller of indulgences Lazaro went over to a 
painter, for whom he mixed colors. Afterward he obtained 
a position as a public water-carrier, a job he sub-let from a 
chaplain. In this occupation he finally began to earn a 
little money, and after several years' labor had saved enough 
to buy some good clothes for himself in which he became, 
as he quotes, a " respectable citizen." His next step up the 
ladder was to rise to the grade of a constable, but this call- 
ing he soon found too dangerous for his liking, and accord- 
ingly he bent his energies to obtain a government office, 
still the height of popular ambition in Spain. As Lazaro 
says : " No one gets along excepting him who has one." 
He succeeded in his effort, and was made a public crier. 
So money and esteem were finally his. His connection 
with the ruling authority gained him the respect of man- 
kind, and he clinched his good fortune by a subservient 
marriage with the rather discredited housekeeper of the 



3IO THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 

arcbpriest of San Salvador. Peace and plenty are the 
reward of his matrimonial complacency. He gets his food 
from the archpriest, his clothes come from the archpriest, 
his abode is near the archpriest's, and nothing but the evil 
tongue of slanderers can disturb his repose. And when the 
archpriest condescends to notice these malignant spirits, 
and cautions his man with the worldly maxim that " ' he who 
hearkens to evil-speaking will never prosper,' " Lazaro shows 
the result of his great change of heart in the reply : " ' Sir, 
I have made up my mind to attach myself to the good.' " 
Thereupon he proceeds to rebuke his meddlesome com- 
panions, and finds in his virtuous action the recompense of 
never-diminishing comforts, until the curtain drops on his 
satisfied repose. 

It is hardly necessary to dwell on the cynicism of this 
conclusion to the picaros career, nor do we feel obliged to 
expatiate on that philosophy of life which made a full 
stomach the happy goal of earthly existence. This is rather 
a subject for sociology than literature, and, as a matter of 
fact, has not continued to be the moral of the realistic novel, 
but rather passed away with the "evil of Spain," which 
occasioned it. The subsequent writers of the school have 
put in its place a struggle for existence, to be sure, but yet 
for a higher type of existence, the end of which should be 
rather social and political power than mere bodily comfort. 

Under a despotic monarchy, or a government by the aris- 
tocracy, there was little hope for the rise of plebeians in 
public affairs. Consequently it was mainly a struggle with 
nature which characterized the existence of the lower 
classes. Now that the doors to power and authority have 
been thrown open to all kinds and conditions of men, we 
witness a fight for the supremacy of man over man. In 
this way the field of literary observation has been broadened, 
and the writers on realism have adapted their tone to the 
spirit of their surroundings. Yet, it is undisputed that this 



THE PIC A RE SCO NOVEL. 3 11 

first short sketch of the ills of humanity, as represented by 
Spain of the sixteenth century, gave to realistic fiction both 
its methods and its standpoints of view, and these have 
lasted down to the present day. No better proof could be 
given of the fidelity of Lazarillo de Tormes to the true obser- 
vation of human nature. 

The immediate influence of this Spanish story was con- 
siderable, in spite of the cruelty of its descriptions and the 
national shame which it so plainly advertised. Besides the 
editions in the mother country and in Flanders, transla- 
tions into other languages spread its popularity abroad. It 
was done into French in 1561, and into English by 1586 
at the latest, while both in France and England editions of 
these versions followed close on one another. The Inquisi- 
tion opposed the book as being hostile to clerical influence, 
and in 1559 bestowed upon it the honor of a place in the 
Index. Still, the secular arm could not suppress the favor 
with which it was received outside of the peninsula. The 
printing presses of Italy and Belgium supplied it to all who 
could purchase, and in Spain itself the ban was removed in 
1573, in return for the omission of the objectionable parts. 

As was the case with the romances of chivalry and the 
pastorals the success of the first picaresco novel called out 
sequels. An anonymous continuation appeared in 1555, 
and is somewhat longer than the original story. It tells how 
Lazaro, in spite of all his precautions to lead a peaceful 
life, fell in with a gay crowd, and how they reveled and 
sported in Toledo. Among these new friends were some 
strangers from Germany. When they had left town and 
life became somewhat tame to our hero, he was persuaded 
to enlist in the war against Algiers. And so he forsook his 
easy and comfortable existence, and tried the hazards of 
the sea. Hardly was he out of sight of land when a storm 
arose, his ship was wrecked, and Lazaro sank to the bottom 
of the sea, only to metamorphose into a tunny. Among the 



312 THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 

finny tribe he cut a great figure, contracted an advantageous 
marriage, and yet at last, going the way of all fish, was taken 
in a net. As he was being hauled to the surface nature 
interfered again in his behalf, and changed him into a mer- 
man. Accordingly he was kept as a curiosity, was carried 
to Seville, and there placed on exhibition. But the sight- 
seers of Andalusia possessed all the vices and virtues of 
their class in other lands. They so pulled and punched 
our merman that they very soon stripped off his scaly coat 
and brought him back again to human form. However, 
he was so changed by his watery sojourn that his best 
friends no longer knew him, and it was only with the greatest 
difficulty that he succeeded in rehabilitating himself in his 
former citizenship. When this was accomplished he had 
lost his desire for family life, and found his chief delight in 
confounding with his subtle arguments the learned doctors 
of Salamanca. 

This sequel to Lazarillo de Tonnes has certainly nothing in 
common with the original work, and cannot be reckoned in 
the same category of fiction. From the time that Lazaro 
left Toledo the story of his adventures is an extravaganza 
pure and simple, the moral of which is not apparent to 
posterity. -In this absurd account there is hardly a trace of 
the observation of real life, while the connecting thread of 
the narrative seems to be the satire which underlies it. 
Yet this sequel did a good work. It effectually discour- 
aged for a time all other continuations of the novel, and it 
was not until the year 1620 that any further attempts in 
that direction were made, j \By that time the original idea 
of picturing the manners of the day had been swallowed up 
wholly in narrating the adventures of an individual. This 
is true, at least, of the sequel written at Paris by the 
Spaniard Juan de Luna, who dwelt mainly on the anti- 
clerical side of his story, while drawing some of his material 
from the old drama, Celestina.^ 



THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL, 3 1 3 

All indications derived from contemporaneous references 
and successive editions go to show that the first picaresco 
novel was heartily welcomed in the land of its birth, and 
that its influence penetrated into all but the lowest classes 
of society. And therefore it seems rather singular that its 
popularity did not immediately arouse the emulation of 
other authors to achieve distinction along the same line of 
romancing. Perhaps the action of the civil authorities in 
placing the book so soon on the Index deterred ambitious 
realists from risking a similar fate. But more likely the 
favor of the romances of chivalry among the populace, so 
deep-seated and enduring, and the craze for pastoral novels 
among the courtiers and their dependents, left the ungra- 
cious portrayals of every-day facts without a sufficient num- 
ber of adherents among the reading public. The people 
loved the aristocratic tone and the optimism of the tales 
of feudalism, and sought in them a diversion from their hard 
and humdrum existence. Those of the educated classes 
who prided themselves on their literary taste, found 
aesthetic enjoyment in the refined style and ingenious 
developments of the pastorals, and thus gave this school 
a disproportionately long career. Even Cervantes, whose 
great work is based on the happenings of ordinary life, and 
who is clearly indebted for some of his inspiration to the 
experience of young Lazaro, tried his hand first at the 
pastorals, and in later years did not disdain heroic fiction. 
We cannot, therefore, marvel greatly that a kind of novel 
which was hostile alike to feudalism and to pretended rus- 
ticity, which depended for its power on exactness of obser- 
vation and delineation of customs and manners really 
existing, should have found itself without an avowed circle 
of defenders when it fell under the ban of the Inquisition. 
It took many years more of individual disappointments 
and national decline to create a public which was willing to 
face the reproduction in literature of its actual surround- 



314 THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 

ings. And it was only when the romance of chivalry and 
the pastoral had worn out their traditional themes that the 
romance of plebeian doings ventured to claim again its 
due share of attention. 

Forty-five years after the appearance of Lazarillo de 
Tonnes, and perhaps in the very year which saw the begin- 
ning of Don Quixote, a second picaresco novel appealed to 
the suffrages of the Spanish people. It was not anony- 
mous. Mateo Aleman, a native of Seville, and a govern- 
ment official, was, like so many of his class in more recent 
times, an occasional author. Of the other works from his 
pen nothing has survived, but the manner in which he tells 
the story of his rascal proves him to have been a man of 
parts, a keen observer, a good narrator, and an excellent 
student of society. The first part of his work, called after 
the name of its hero, Guzman de Alfarache, was published 
in 1599. The narrative is autobiographical, like the story 
of its predecessor* 

Guzman was a native of Seville, of illegitimate birth, 
though claiming nevertheless in his make-up the inheritance 
of certain traits from his father, a Genoese merchant and 
something of a thief. His abandoned mother brought him 
up until he left her at an early period and wandered over 
the country, attended by several idle companions. The 
adventures of this band, the experiences its members 
undergo, especially in the filthy inns of the smaller towns, 
the stories they tell, and the jokes they play on their greedy 
hosts, form the first series of the episodes in the novel. The 
vivacity and wit of the account redeem to some extent the 
ugliness of its facts, and temper the ponderous moral reflec- 
tions, in which the author at times loses himself. All the 
stories are not of a low order, and one among them is par- 
ticularly pleasing and romantic, possibly belonging to the in- 
exhaustible stock of Moorish tales. It tells how two lovers of 
Granada, Osmin and Daraja, were separated shortly after 



THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 315 

their marriage by the capture of the latter. Osmin left 
Granada in search of his wife, but was also taken prisoner 
and carried to Seville. There he has the good fortune to 
get a glimpse of Daraja, which prompts him to devise some 
stratagem for meeting her face to face. He disguises him- 
self first as a mason, and afterward as a gardener, gains 
thus ready access to her master's house, and obtains fre- 
quent interviews with her. After various vicissitudes, in 
which Osmin changes his part many times, wins renown in 
bull-fights and joustings, is mobbed by the populace, "which 
is always hostile to nobles," and narrowly escapes being 
hanged, the lovers are once more united, and all ends well. 

This episode, with others, is inserted into the main nar- 
rative with the evident intention of varying the subject and 
holding the attention of the reader. Returning now to the 
principal theme we read of Guzman's struggles with pov- 
erty, his career at Madrid as a domestic, and his sufferings 
from hunger. One result of his practical experience he 
freely confesses to be the disappearance of his sense of 
shame ci Under the pressure of circumstances he enlists at 
last in the noble army of picaros, but still bestows on his 
audience abundant moral advice. He enters an inn as scul- 
lion, is soon dismissed for stealing, yet manages to profit by 
his release to accumulate by various tricks enough money 
and clothes, to set up at Toledo after a while as a man of 
property. But there he becomes in his turn the prey of dis- 
solute associates, loses all his money, and finally takes ser- 
vice for the Italian campaign. On his way to Genoa the 
captain of the ship makes a confidant of Guzman. When 
he reaches that town he is apparently welcomed by his 
father's family, and is induced to take up his abode with 
them. But the very first night he is scared away from their 
roof by an apparition, and begins his career all over again. 

He learns the beggar's trade, which Italy practiced at 
that time, describes the factories which prepared cripples 



316 THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 

for the market by early mutilation (as in Hugo's V Homme 
qui r it), and in a long satire on Italy and Italian customs 
awards that country the palm for downright cruelty. After 
a while he reaches Rome, where a cardinal receives him and 
makes him his page. Guzman shows his gratitude for this 
honor by turning the house upside down with his practical 
jokes, until his passion for gambling drives him again out 
of doors. Afterward he enters the service of the French 
ambassador, where he prospers for a while, and hears the 
tragic tale of Dorido and Clorinia, which he repeats to us 
as illustrative of Italian manners and Italian character. 

Dorido is in love with Clorinia, but in his confidence of 
her affection toward him he agrees to cede her to his 
friend Horatio, provided she prefers the latter. Clorinia 
proves faithful to her lover's trust and rejects Horatio's 
suit. But the latter is only angered by her fidelity. In his 
madness he stabs her to the heart, and then succumbs to 
Dorido's vengeance, who cuts off the hands of his faithless 
friend and hangs up his body at his mistress' casement. 
The recital of this cheerful incident brings the first part of 
Guzman de Alfarache to a close. 

Thus far in the second novel of thzfiicaresco group we have 
what may be loosely termed an expansion or revision of the 
first. And in some respects this revision is for the worse. 
/We miss in Aleman's story that clearness and definiteness 
of presentation which the fewer episodes and the absence 
of digressions made possible in Lazarillo de Tormes. Orf 
the other hand the adventures of Guzman reveal more 
completely the various sides of contemporaneous Spanish 
life, by the very fact that they are so varied and introduce 
so many characters. In these respects the novel is more 
like the English romances of Smollett or Fielding, follow- 
ing man through his different circumstances — neglecting of 
course his best instincts — and aiming to portray the lead- 
ing features of the average existence. In comparison with 



THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 3*7 

Guzman we might say that the author of Lazarillo had a 
proposition to defend, while Aleman concerns himself only 
with a reproduction of what a wanderer might see and ex- 
perience. Consequently, from the standpoint of fiction, 
Aleman's book is much more of a literary composition than 
the narrative of his anonymous predecessor, and far sur- 
passes the latter, both in the development of its successive 
situations and in the style peculiar to a romance. One 
might say that Lazarillo de Tonnes is a drama divided into 
well-marked acts, or that it is a serial painting of the genre 
type comprising so many distinct subjects. And indeed it 
does bring to mind some of the street scenes which Murillo 
has handed down to our admiration. 

Yet we do not mean to imply that, while Guzman de 
Alfarache is the better novel, it does not lose, by the multi- 
plicity of its incidents, something of the force and direct- 
ness of its model. Certainly its pious reflections are far 
inferior, in their verbosity, to the short and pungent morals 
of Lazarillo de Tonnes. Yet Aleman is not so bitter. His 
introduction of stories foreign to the main idea tempers 
agreeably the prevailing satire of human kind, and the 
socialistic views which pervade it — bringing in frequently 
the contrast between the sympathy of the poor and the 
charity of the rich — are not so unyielding as the stern 
struggle for a livelihood which animates the whole spirit of 
the older novel. 

The popularity of Guzman de Alfarache was immediate 
and widespread. The very next year, 1600, it was done 
into French, while at home it succeeded — where Lazarillo 
had failed — in drawing the attention of literary men toward 
this hitherto neglected department of novel-writing. 
Indeed Aleman may be called the second founder of the 
realistic novel, for with him it first started into active life. 
So much so that before he himself was ready to print his 
second part, already in manuscript, his own thunder was 



31S THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 

stolen by a literary pirate, who marketed, in 1603, a sequel 
to Guzman which pretended to be the authentic one. This 
thief's real name was Juan Marti, but in his book he took 
the pseudonym of Mateo Lujan de Sayavedra. From 
Aleman's remarks on his attempted deception it would 
seem as though Marti had obtained access to the unfinished 
pages of the real second part. 

However that may be, Marti starts off with Guzman in 
Rome at the French embassy. But he soon falls in with 
two Spaniards, who join him in sneak-thieving and after- 
ward make him their dupe. He therefore leaves Rome 
and goes to Naples, indulging in many moralizings on the 
way. At Naples he becomes the servant of a priest, and 
gains an idea of life in that town. Next we find him as 
a steward and a great personage, though when suspected 
of theft his station does not save him from the jail. Par- 
doned after a time he enters the viceroy's service as a 
menial to his cook, and finally returns to Spain with the 
viceroy. On reaching Barcelona he comes across old 
friends among the beggars of the town. So he concludes 
not to remain there, but goes to Alcala to matriculate in 
the university and enjoy student life. After some time 
spent in educational pursuits, he takes up again his wan- 
derings, arrives at Valencia, and enters Heredia's company 
as an actor. He is not long, of course, in falling in love 
with the leading lady. Now Margaret of Austria makes 
her triumphal entry into the city, and Guzman, plying his 
old trade during the festivals given in her honor, is caught 
and sent to the galleys. Here Marti suddenly breaks off 
his narrative with the conventional promise of a continu- 
ation at some future time. 

But the falsifier was too ambitious for his own reputation, 
and he would have fared better with posterity not to have 
connected his story with the novel of Aleman, since he is 
far inferior to him both in invention and composition. 



THE PIC ARE SCO NOVEL. 3 X 9 

Instead of expending what talent he possessed on the study 
of human nature, and on general observations on society, 
Marti fills out his plan with anecdotes, superstitions, the 
details of trades and professions. He rejoices likewise in 
his own erudition and makes labored efforts to vary his 
task with stories from outside sources, as Aleman did. In 
following the whims of his model, as well as his plot, Marti 
also attempts to convey morals to his readers, and pushed 
this fault of Aleman to a wearying extreme. The result of 
the whole imitation was the complete failure of his venture 
in literature ; and his notoriety to-day is due, not to his own 
struggles after fame, but to the lashings which he received 
from the scourge of the enraged novelist, whose sequel he 
had so clumsily tried to forestall. 

The genuine continuation was published in 1605, pref- 
aced with a prologue on Marti's forgery, a subject which 
does not fail to stir up the author at every turn of the 
ensuing story. For here Aleman is more openly satirical 
than in the first part. He has also conceived the notion of 
beginning each chapter with some virtuous counsel, and 
then following it up with a rascally adventure. We find 
Guzman still in Rome, and acting as the go-between in the 
amorous intrigues of his French master. The account of 
these amours is varied with the recital of many anecdotes, 
and the insertion of not a few fables ; and one episode, 
which may well be omitted here, is taken from Masuccio's 
collection of tales. But though the ambassador may be 
fortunate in love, the flunky is not, and after being victim- 
ized several times by the women to whom he is attached, 
Guzman incurs his employer's displeasure and leaves Rome. 
In so doing he jumps from the frying-pan into the fire, for 
he soon runs across Sayavedra, and is exposed from now on 
to the deceit and treachery of that archrogue. Together 
they pass through Siena and Florence, which the author 
describes at some length, and by the aid of money they had 



320 THE PJCARESCO NOVEL. 

fleeced from a greenhorn they reach Milan. Here Sayave- 
dra, who had already robbed his companion, and then 
obtained his pardon, plans a forgery on a merchant by 
enlisting in the project the latter's clerk. They succeed in 
defrauding their man, and once more in funds, turn their 
faces toward Genoa. There Guzman's relatives, who had 
driven him off when poor, receive him now with open arms, 
supposing him to be rich. He accepts their hospitality 
most effusively, and when the opportune moment comes, 
takes his revenge by robbing them and immediately 
decamping for Spain. No voyage in the old-time novels 
ever escaped a storm. During the one which now 
threatens the destruction of their craft Sayavedra drowns 
himself, and receives a good riddance from his companion. 
The rest of the passage is enlivened by the rather weak 
yarns of the captain of the boat. 

The ship lands its passengers at Barcelona, where the 
adventures of our hero multiply. He makes the tour of 
Spain, as he had already done of Italy. In Saragossa he falls 
in love with a blooming widow. In Alcala he admires the 
streets and the learning, and when he reaches Madrid, after 
getting into difficulties with the police and undergoing 
arrest, he marries a woman of property for the sake of her 
comfortable dowry. Yet life even now did not resemble a 
bed of roses. His better-half proved exceedingly fractious, 
and her ill-temper drove our picaro to the abject extremity 
of seeking consolation for his marital woes in the perusal 
of pastoral novels and romances of chivalry. Finally the 
death of his wife affords his wounded sensibilities a respite. 
But with the aggravation he entombs also the balm, for her 
dowry dies with her. Forced to enter active life again, he 
enrolls himself in the list of the candidates for orders at 
Alcala, but soon falls in love and marries a second time. 
His new heart's delight is not a scold nor a prude. In fact 
Guzman's establishment is supported by the money which 



THE PI CARE SCO NOVEL. 3 21 

his wife's lovers pay to her, and the surplus above the 
necessary expenses Guzman applies to the amusement of 
gambling. 

Naturally, such a household does not long keep itself out 
of the clutches of the law. Adversity smites it, and the 
couple flee to Seville, where Guzman visits once more his 
aged mother. He is rid of his wife by her elopement with 
a sea-captain, and he himself is now at liberty to return to 
his old pursuit of thieving. He gets employment as a 
steward, robs his mistress, is caught, and sentenced to the 
galleys for six years. The description of his new surround- 
ings, the dress and manners of the galley-slaves, now occu- 
pies no small space. His companions can give him points 
in rascality, and succeed in robbing him of what he still 
possessed. But he wins the favor of the overseer, excites 
thereby the envy of his mates, and, when the opportunity 
presents itself, is accused by one of them of stealing his 
master's plate. For this offense Guzman is well flogged. 
But the treachery toward him has aroused his anger. He 
watches for an occasion of taking vengeance on the con- 
victs, and when their plans of escape are brought to his 
ears he betrays them to the authorities. Thus he regains 
his liberty, and concludes the story of his adventures with 
the promise of still another sequel. 

The second part of Guzman de Alfarache is somewhat 
longer than the amount first published, and rivaled it in 
popularity. Its appearance was the signal for many 
editions, both of the whole novel and of the parts sepa- 
rately, and for translations into every language of western 
Europe, and even into Latin. To account for the extra- 
ordinary favor with which it was received we may very well 
suppose a general reaction against the novels of pure imagi- 
nation, and in behalf of a more real view of humanity and 
its conditions. Aleman was shrewd enough to profit by 
this change among the reading public, and by his wit and 



322 THE PICA RE SCO NOVEL. 

talent placed himself easily in the front rank of the authors 
of his day. For he handles well his pen, writes correctly 
and fluently, while his observations are bold, keen, satirical, 
and founded on what was actually before his eyes. And it 
is not one of the least of the attractions of the book that 
its hero believed thoroughly in himself. His rascalities 
were his character. His disposition was* a compound of 
deceit and avarice, and in his composition the sense of 
shame had been omitted, albeit he is one of the most pious 
of all the rogues of fiction. Such a pure type of a low-lived 
villain excites our interest by the very subjection of all 
ideals to the most ignoble ends. Guzman balances Amadis, 
and the picaro affords, at times, a not unwelcome foil to the 
true and perfect knight. 

The posterity of Aleman's novel is legion. Supplanting 
the memory of Lazarillode Tonnes by its extent and variety, 
it started the picaresco. story on a career of prosperity, 
which lasted in Spain for a full half a century and was sig- 
nalized by the appearance of many brilliant productions. 
Nor did its influence cease with its progeny in the mother 
country. In France, in the last years of Louis XIV., the 
spirit of Spanish realistic fiction aroused the emulation of 
Le Sage. Modified and adapted to other surroundings of 
race and time by his genius, the transformed novel soon 
made its way across the Channel, to receive a fresh infusion 
of vigorous Anglo-Saxon blood which should preserve its 
life for another century. And the realist novelists of the 
present day, the Balzacs and Thackerays— to cite the chiefs 
— are as surely the disciples of Fielding and Le Sage as Gil 
Bias was a relative of Guzman de Alfarache and a descend- 
ant of little Lazaro, who first saw the light in an old mill by 
the side of the river Tormes. 



CHAPTER XI. 

OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. ENGLISH NOVELS. 
CHINESE NOVELS. 

After their great creations in the line of both ideal and 
realistic fiction, and after the founding of the three kinds 
of novels on which all future romances were to be pat- 
terned, the Spanish story-tellers of the Renaissance might 
very well have been excused from further obligations to 
modern readers. Yet in the midst of so busy a production 
of all these kinds, which especially appealed to the taste 
of the times and were in fashion, it is not surprising 
that other species than the principal ones should be sought 
after by isolated authors, and that embryos of what have 
later become full-fledged types should be discovered among 
the mass of novels written in the peninsula during the six- 
teenth century. 

The attempt to derive the religious novel from the 
romances of chivalry has already been noticed, and exam- 
ples of the results attained have been submitted to inspec- 
tion. And akin to the pastoral novels, aside from the 
didactic element, there was to be found a fair amount of 
stories in which allegory played a leading part, though 
none of these stories reach the stage of complete romances. 
Furthermore, starting from the love sophistries of medie- 
val lyric, there are echos also of what might almost be called 
society novels. An instance of this kind is offered by the 
Question de Amor, assigned to Diego de San Pedro, and 
belonging to the year 15 12. Here the question as to 
whether he is the greater sufferer who has loved and lost 



324 OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 

or he who loves in vain is varied and prolonged by descrip- 
tions of court life, and of social customs in Naples and 
other Italian cities. But San Pedro's book does not possess 
enough plan to be ranked higher than a half-serious, half- 
amusing narrative, and it did not incite any further efforts 
to realize that type of composition which it more than 
vaguely hints at. 

With better success, from the modern standpoint, at 
least, was the novel of travel undertaken by a certain 
Jeronimo de Contreras. His story, the Selva de Aventuras, 
which appeared in 1573, contains a plot in the shape of a 
love affair, which is the thread connecting the different 
journeys the hero makes. The reason that the traveler, 
Luzman by name, leaves his native Seville to visit foreign 
shores, is because his suit had been rejected by the beauti- 
ful Arbolea, and like so many lovers of more recent date 
he sought for healing balm in the distractions of travel. 
When his lady dismisses him he follows the example of 
Amadis, and remains for some time under the pious conso- 
lation of a Spanish hermit. Afterward he passes into Italy, 
the land of sightseeing in those days. He visits Venice, 
runs across in the mountains of the North a princess of 
Ferrara, whom disappointment in love had led to assume a 
hunting costume, explores Milan, meets with a second 
unhappy swain, and leisurely drags his melancholy up and 
down the whole peninsula, describing the cities he enters 
and the events which attract his notice. At last captured 
by pirates he breathes out his sorrows in a prison of Algiers, 
until he is free once more to return to his fatherland and 
the abode of his mistress. But during his prolonged absence 
Arbolea in sheer desperation had become a nun. Noth- 
ing now is left for Luzman but to imitate her example, and 
to turn hermit, which he does straightway. 

It is plain that the Selva de Aventuras is before all a book 
of travel, and that the love story in it is only the setting, a 



OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 3 2 5 

pretense to hold the reader's interest. And though the 
author tried to re-enforce his meager plot by multiplying the 
accounts of blighted affections which obtained among the 
chance acquaintances of his hero (a clear trace of the in- 
fluence of the pastorals), the narrative of Italian journeys 
and hardships among the infidels proves a much more 
attractive subject than the memory of a suit rejected- For 
in this story there is no necessary connection between the 
two themes. But some thirty years later, at the beginning 
of the seventeenth century, when the plot and the incidents 
of travel were more intimately combined by a writer of 
talent, the Spanish public was treated to a genuine novel of 
adventure in the Viaje Entretenido of Agostino de Rojas. 
Still in many respects, and particularly in their selection of 
material, the novels of travel resemble the picaresco stories, 
though the spirit of the two kinds is entirely distinct. 

De Rojas had a follower in Scarron and his Roman co- 
mique, and the nineteenth century has abounded in successors 
to the latter and to writers of his ilk. But it cannot be 
claimed that the Spanish novel of travel has directly pro- 
duced any important type of fiction. Other influences came 
in from the realists and from the writers of antiquity to ob- 
scure the genealogy of the direct descendants of this school ; 
and to-day stories of adventure, which are held together by a 
plot, have deserted the matter-of-fact descriptions of Con- 
treras and De Rojas for the imaginative school of Anton- 
ius Diogenes, and Cyrano de Bergerac. 

There is a second type of these independent attempts at 
novels in the Spain of the sixteenth century which deserves 
mention, a type which may be said to be an outgrowth of 
the romances of chivalry. It is a novel of erotic adventure 
placed in a definite locality and period — an historical novel, 
in other words. To begin the series of historical novels 
the country was prepared not only by its evolution of the 
stories of feudalism, but also by the great events which had 



326 OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 

taken place upon its own soil. For many generations the 
tablelands of the center and the mountain ranges of the 
south had borne the long burden of civil strife and wars 
of religion, which had found a responsive echo in the 
ballad poetry of the country ; while on the other side of the 
frontier, in Seville and Granada, the endless struggles be- 
tween infidel and believer, and among the infidels them- 
selves, had been no less fertile in the production of subjects 
for popular song. In the fifteenth century these romances 
of the Moors had already begun to reach the ears of their 
hereditary foes, and by their peculiar tenderness and the 
sweetness of their melodies had excited the admiration of 
the chivalrous Crusaders. The discovery of the New World , 
and the voyages of exploration which that event incited, 
might reasonably have been expected to furnish historical 
novelists with abundant and appropriate material — and 
did indeed supply Camoens with the facts necessary to his 
epic poem. And yet neither they nor the purely national 
traditions of the Spanish people had a more definite effect 
on literature than the romances of chivalry would indicate. 
So it was the Moors, and the Moors of Granada, who sup- 
plied the Castilian author with the characters and the plot 
of his tentative historical fiction. 

This author was Gines Perez de Hita, and his work goes 
under the name of The Civil Wars of Granada, a book 
which is partly true as to its facts, and partly fictitious. 
The latter element especially prevails in the first division 
of the narrative, which was published in 1595. Here the 
author follows the same method of composition that was 
carried out so well in more modern times by Walter 
Scott, and places in an historical framework the imagined 
careers of private individuals. The years which he chooses 
for the setting of his story are those immediately preceding 
the downfall of Granada, and the story he tells concerns 
the famous feud between the family of the Zegris and the 



OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 327 

race of the Abencerrages. Hita claims, as Cervantes did 
soon after him, that his narrative is simply a translation 
from a Moorish writer, but its whole spirit is Christian, and 
the standpoint of view is entirely Spanish. So we are 
obliged to reject the testimony of our scribe and assign 
the merits of the whole account to the credit of his in- 
ventive powers. And it is a curious fact that this romance, 
with its partiality for the Abencerrages and its contempt 
for Boabdil, has penetrated the popular sentiment of 
western Europe and turned it forever against the enemies 
of its hero — and against the unfortunate monarch who lived 
to see the last Moorish kingdom in Spain sink under the 
weight of his throne. 

The Civil Wars begins with a short sketch of the found- 
ing of Granada, and a description of the city and the fac- 
tions which desolated its streets during the last years of 
Moslem rule. The ground having been prepared in this 
manner, the particular actors of the story are then intro- 
duced, and we are apprized of Muza's fortunes, who is 
loved by Fatima, but who loves Daraja, who in turn loves 
Abenamar, one of the Abencerrages — a situation of con- 
flicting affections which was very likely borrowed from 
the pastorals. But besides love-making there is plenty of 
chivalry. Muza, as champion of the Moors, fights to a 
draw with Calatrava, the champion of the Spaniards, in 
a duel that strikingly resembles the prolonged combats in 
Amadis of Gaul. A banquet and ball in the beleaguered 
city followed this combat. During the festivities Muza 
presented a bouquet to Daraja, who later gave it to an 
Abencerrage. When Muza found his flowers in the pos- 
session of the latter his anger broke out in insulting words, 
and the ancient feud of the Zegris and the Abencerrages 
was once more revived. But peace is temporarily restored 
by the king, and everybody gives himself up to the pas- 
times of the court. 



328 OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 

Now Hita begins to vary the prose of his work with 
occasional ballads he pretends to have taken from the 
Moors, and which very likely were sung by the minstrels of 
the border. To each of these romances he appends a long 
explanation, developing their subjects in prose, and thus 
narrates as many episodes of love and adventure as there 
are poems. The first series of ballads relates the wooing 
of Zaida by the knight Zaide, the opposition of the maiden's 
parents to the suit, and the jealousy of Zaide's friend, 
Tarfe. One day the lady sent to her lover a tress of her 
hair, and he in his joy unbosomed himself to Tarfe. The 
anger of the rejected swain overcame his sense of knightly 
honor. He finds occasion soon to tell Zaida that Zaide is 
boasting of the favors she bestows on him. Her shame and 
wrath are not long concealed from her distressed lover, and 
at her rebuke he revenges himself by the death of Tarfe. 
Now the Zegris gather to take vengeance on Zaide, but 
Boabdil appears again as peacemaker and marries the 
knight to his lady-love. 

While the quarrels of the rival houses continue in the 
city in spite of the presence of the common enemy without 
the walls, the crowd seeks distraction from its impending 
doom in the pleasures of bull-fights and tournaments. But 
family hatred disturbs even the very amusements. In the 
jousts Fatima's father treacherously arms himself with an 
iron-tipped lance and, by wounding his opponent with it, 
embitters still more the hostility of the clans. Another 
challenge is brought from the besieging Christians, this 
time in the name of Ponce de Leon. It js accepted by 
Malique Alabez, and the combat between the champions 
again results in a draw. St. John's Day now approaches 
bringing its usual number of festivals. In the joustings of 
that day Abenamar defends the portrait of Fatima, as in 
Palmerin of England the knights protected the likeness of 
Miraguarda. After many brilliant deeds at arms Fatima's 



OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 3 2 9 

champion adds to her picture the face of Galiana, whose 
lover had fallen before his onset. In the midst of these 
scenes of chivalry there are long descriptions of the dresses 
of the ladies and the trappings of the cavaliers. Street 
parades take place, and in the make-up of the floats the 
rival families try to outdo each other in magnificence. But 
the Zegris have not been idle in the meantime. They have 
agreed on the destruction of the Abencerrages, and now 
accuse them to the king of disloyalty. After these inci- 
dents the tournaments are renewed, and Abenamar continues 
to gather in the portraits of other beauties, until his career 
is cut short by the arrival of Calatrava. 

It cannot be said that our author is especially versed in 
the Moorish religion, whatever may be his acquaintance 
with the history and customs of his neighbors. For he 
makes the faithful of Granada address their supplicating 
prayers to a " golden Mahomet," in very much the same 
fashion that the French mediaeval epic was wont to describe 
the idolatrous adorations of the Arabs. But Mahomet is 
deaf to the entreaties of his worshipers. That evening Alba- 
yaldos accepts Calatrava's defiance, but is mortally wounded 
by the Spanish hero, is suddenly converted to Christianity, 
and expires (after being duly baptized) with many pious ad- 
monitions to Muza on his lips. This conversion is the signal 
for another dispute between the two factions of the infidels. 

And so the story winds its way in and out of the 
romances which now form the greater part of the narrative. 
Abenamar marries Fatima. The Zegris, at their wits' end 
for an accusation against their rivals, maliciously slander 
the queen to Boabdil, and with the outburst of his wrath 
gain at last his alliance. The execution of the Abencerrages 
is decided upon. Boabdil posts the Zegris in the royal 
palace, sends for the devoted family one by one, and has 
them beheaded in the famous Court of the Lions. How- 
ever, one of their pages escapes to alarm the city. A great 



33° OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 

uproar ensues, in the midst of which Muza enters the town 
on his return from a foray against the Spaniards. He 
hears the news and summons the people to his standard. 
They storm the Alhambra and recover the bodies of the 
slain. Now the royal family itself takes sides, and the con- 
stant warfare in the public streets places the whole city 
under a genuine reign of terror. At last, tired of civil 
strife and indignant at the treachery practiced upon them, 
the Abencerrages and their adherents determine to go over 
to the Christian camp and be converted to the true faith. 
They accordingly put themselves in communication with 
Ferdinand, abandon Granada, are baptized, and enter the 
ranks of the Spanish host. Finally the Moorish queen 
herself is seized with the prevailing desire to change one's 
creed ; and when she is publicly accused of the crimes 
invented by the Zegris, four Christians, disguised as Turks, 
appear to champion her innocence against her four assail- 
ants. The victory of the believers naturally follows, the 
queen is freed, the Alhambra is taken by the Crusaders, 
and finally, after many more incidents and additional apos- 
tasies, the city itself falls into the hands of the Spanish 
rulers. 

We have chosen to look on Las Guerras Civiles de Granada 
as a romance rather than as an historical treatise, and 
the reception which it met among the contemporaries of 
its author seems to sustain our position. For no sooner 
had the first part appeared than editions of it began to 
multiply, thus testifying to a popularity such as no mere 
chronicle of events could have enjoyed in that age. Such 
favor must also be wholly credited to the romantic senti- 
ment of the book, since when we come to look on it as a 
piece of literature, we find it woefully lacking. Unity of 
action it possesses through the general nature of its subject, 
the history of the Abencerrages. But the tone of the work 
is plainly false, excepting, perhaps, to the most bigoted and 



OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 33 x 

credulous ; its style is of very inferior quality, and the scenes 
in it that are really well described are few and far be- 
tween. In view of these defects, at a time when art in 
literature was being more and more sought after under the 
influence of the revival of learning, we have no recourse 
but to ascribe the welcome which Hita's invention received 
to the prose expansions of the ballads containing the amo- 
rous adventures of as many loving pairs, as well as to the 
beauty of the ballads themselves. We may recall that in 
Montemayor's Diana, the episode of the Abencerrage and 
his mistress is easily the best of the volume, and from the 
frequent presence in Spanish literature of such traditions 
concerning the Moors and their courtships, it is clear that 
the Christians of Spain had long been accustomed to the 
recital of similar legends, and found pleasure in the music 
of the songs out of which they undoubtedly had grown. 
Hita was shrewd enough to make a collection of these 
erotic tales and join them together by the general idea of a 
great final national disaster, a notion which reveals a man 
of talent who well deserved the success he obtained. 

His story, like the other prominent Spanish narratives of 
the century, spread beyond the territorial boundaries of its 
native land, and, following the example of the romances of 
chivalry, entered on a new career in the novels of France 
in the seventeenth century. It did not, however, create the 
European historical novel as might have been expected. 
On foreign soil the affectations of the Hotel de Rambouillet 
perverted the literary spirit of Hita's new departure in 
fiction, and drew from it the same results as had been drawn 
from Amadis of Gaul. The Civil Wars of Granada sank 
back therefore to the grade of the heroic-gallant novel from 
which it had tried in vain to separate itself, and was repro- 
duced in such compositions of French fiction as Almahide 
of Madeleine de Scudery and Zayde of Mme. de La Fay- 
ette. Romantic, rather than historical, these novels in turn 



33 2 OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 

appealed to the sentimentality of Florian and the melan- 
choly of Chateaubriand, and their influence in literature 
finally died away at the very time when the true historical 
novel was being created. This was the end of Hita's 
attempt to substitute for the insipid romances of chivalry 
the love and valor of the imaginary actors of a definite 
historical epoch. Like the author of Lazarillo de Tormes, 
he may be said to have been ahead of his times, but in his 
case the anticipation is to be reckoned by centuries and 
not by decades. 

He himself may have suspected this fact, in spite of 
the success which his first volume experienced, for in the 
second part of his narrative, which appeared in 1604, he 
cut loose entirely from the first, and related the Morisco 
rebellion of 1568 in very much the style of a lean and mat- 
ter-of-fact chronicle. To be sure, he introduces a few bal- 
lads of his own manufacture, " so," as he says, " not to 
break with the style of the first part," and tells one or two 
interesting stories about the lovers who opposed so dar- 
ingly in the Sierra Nevada the power of Philip II. Yet 
these are merely wanderings from the main road, and affect 
but little the historical tendency of the book. 

With Perez de Hita the long line of Spanish inventors in 
the field of fiction comes to an end. For fifty years and 
more down into the seventeenth century, the models of 
their ingenuity continued to be reproduced by their country- 
men in many creditable works. But new discoveries in 
romancing were no longer to be made in the peninsula. 
From now on the tokens of novelistic primacy pass to other 
lands, to France first and then to England. Yet whatever 
may be the improvement in the quality or construction of 
novels since the loss of the Armada, we must not forget 
that the novels which came forth from Spain of the six- 
teenth century set the example for all those, countless in 
number, which the other nations of Europe have accumu- 



OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 333 

lated down to the present day. The novels of the East, 
and more especially the stories of the Alexandrian age, 
entered into modern literature only in the way of sugges- 
tions and incidents. Of the same nature, and no greater, 
was the influence on subsequent writers of Italian fiction, 
heroic, realistic, or pastoral. But Spain gave to foreign 
novelists not only the mold in which to cast their matter, 
but also the spirit which was to animate it. And when we 
trace out the ancestry of all the various kinds of that prose 
romancing which has become the distinctive literary feature 
of the nineteenth century, we shall find that they descend 
in near or remote relationship from the inventive geniuses 
of Portugal and Castile. 

This fact is all the more apparent when we come to con- 
sider the literatures of the other peoples of western Europe 
precedent to the seventeenth century, and endeavor to dis- 
cover among them even suggestions of perfect novels. The 
writers of Italy concerned themselves with the productions 
of pastorals only, and never persevered in the full develop- 
ment of even this their favorite kind of fiction. The 
novella in prose, and in poetry the great creations of Dante 
and the romantic epic, under the influence of the Renais- 
sance, seemed to supply the bulk of the demand for other 
novelistic reading. Novels, to be sure, were appreciated in 
Italy, but the public was satisfied with translations from 
the Greek and the Spanish, and made no claim on the 
imagination or observation of native authors. This neglect 
of the longer works of prose fiction on the part of Italian 
writers is difficult to explain, especially when we take into 
consideration their taste for lyric-narrative poetry and their 
talent for writing short stories. 

Though Italy in her literary history has never shown 
much aptitude for the making of novels, and there- 
fore may be readily excused for her shortcomings in this 
respect previous to the sixteenth century, she yet shines by 



334 OTHER KINDS OF SPANISH NOVELS. 

contrast with her Romance neighbor of the Northwest 
during the period in question. For after the wave of me- 
diaeval romancing had died away, France did not originate 
any kind of fictitious narrative until the great outburst of that 
school which began her classical era in literature. It was 
perhaps too much to expect that there should be any literary 
growth on her soil during the devastations of the Hundred 
Years' War ; and when the monarchy had brought peace to 
the land under Louis XII. and Francis I., the contempora- 
neous inroad of the vigorous literatures of the South occu- 
pied for a while the attention of her literary men, while the 
revival of learning, which reached her so tardily, carried 
the aspirations of the educated back to the imitation of 
antiquity. 

Yet there are a few traces of that assimilation and modi- 
fication of foreign material which has ever distinguished 
the genius of the French, and has given them their lasting 
hold on the artistic life of other nations. The romances 
of chivalry were adapted to French taste, and were con- 
tinued, with certain changes in tone and sentiment, through 
many sequels. And in the matter of the pastorals, Les Ber- 
gerics de Juliette bears witness to an improvement in plan 
over its Italian models, and already argues a new departure 
in novelistic composition, which the Astre'e justified later 
on. The French translations of the Greek novels were also 
more elegant and lasting than anything of the sort which 
Italy had undertaken. And so by the end of the sixteenth 
century we find all the known kinds of foreign fiction, 
ancient and modern, excepting the picaresco novel, fully 
naturalized on the soil of France. 

Under Louis XIII. France performed an important service 
to the Germanic nations, in transmitting to them the ver- 
sions she had made of the fiction of Spain and Italy. But 
in the sixteenth century, at least so far as Germany and 
Holland are concerned, this process had not as yet begun. 



ENGLISH NOVELS. 335 

In those countries the native renderings of the old French 
epic romances were still at the height of their popularity, 
and formed, with very inconsiderable exceptions, the whole 
stock of light reading within reach of their inhabitants. 
The idea of originating similar stories, or of picturing their 
own life and surroundings, did not make itself felt with the 
deliberate Teutons until the seventeenth century was well 
under way. What is true of Holland and Germany is still 
more true of the Scandinavian nations. They followed 
their more civilized kindred at a respectful distance. 

But England, which in the eighteenth century was to 
repeat Spain of the sixteenth, had already begun to bestir 
herself in regard to the composition of genuine novels. In 
the two decades previous to the year 1600 several of her 
leading authors, and more particularly her dramatists, had 
exercised their pen on subjects which exceeded the limits 
of the ordinary story. This movement was various in its 
manifestations, and cannot be traced to any one source. 
It was probably in the air, as it seems to have been in 
France, but in England it took shape earlier in consequence 
of the greater mental stimulus of the Elizabethan era. It 
was clearly fostered by the translations of Spanish novels 
through their French versions, and by the southern travels 
of the venturesome spirits who occasionally abandoned 
their favorite taverns in the British capital. Among the 
wealthier and more educated class it was no doubt quick- 
ened by contact with the literary men of the social circles 
of the Continent. 

Such at least is the lesson drawn from a general survey of 
the material which was used by the English novel-writers — 
if they may be properly dignified by that term — of the time. 
Their subjects were clearly suggested by the Italian novelle 
and by the French renderings of Greek and Spanish novels ; 
and a direct communication with Spanish literature is not 
at all apparent in these works of fiction. Still the avenues 



S3 6 ENGLISH NOVELS. 

of approach were so numerous, and the literary activity of 
the period so intense, that it is not safe, with our present 
uncertain light on the subject, to assert absolutely that 
among the English story-tellers there may not be one or 
more who may have come into actual contact with the ready 
writers of the Spanish peninsula. 

The honor of being the first Englishman to raise fiction 
above the level of a mere tale must undoubtedly be assigned 
to Lyly, although the term novel can hardly be applied to 
his Euphues. It is too plainly a hand-book of etiquette, 
made a little more palatable to the public by the employ- 
ment of a hero and by a few indications of the trend of the 
hero's affections, to be treated under any other head than 
that of didactic fiction. This is not saying that novels may 
not be moral, political, or social arguments, but in this case 
Lyly was too much concerned with the ways of polite 
society, and too little with his plot or characters to be 
openly admitted to the sacred pale of novelists. Yet he 
very likely paved the way for more ambitious successors, 
and set in motion narratives which did not err, so far as his 
had done, in the didactic direction. 

While Lyly was intent on initiating his countrymen into 
the mysteries of the fashionable world his contemporary, a 
man of fashion himself, Sir Philip Sidney, was employing 
his leisure moments in the composition of a genuine 
romance of chivalry. At least we must suppose he had in 
mind a novel of the heroic type, since the general outline of 
his Arcadia resembles so closely the conventional plan of 
that school. Sidney, however, was no imitator. He wished 
to be original in all respects, and partly perhaps through 
this desire, and partly also because he was writing for the 
amusement of his beloved sister, he varied his story of valor 
and knightly adventures with episodes after the manner of 
the Italian pastoral and romantic epic, and with incidents 
which were suggested possibly by the Greek novels, in that 



ENGLISH NOVELS. 337 

day so widely read. Thus the result of his literary effort in 
the domain of fiction is another composite, which endeav- 
ored to unite too many different elements to be a success. 
For there is in his Arcadia a mixture of the noble and the 
buffoon, which smacks strongly of Italian influence, like the 
sentiment underlying Orlando Furioso. In its verse he 
copies the forms of Italian poetry, though it may be remem- 
bered that these forms had already been imitated by the 
pastoral writers of Spain, and that Sidney pays no more 
attention to them than he does to the meters of classical 
prosody, which appear by their side in his romance. 

Why Sidney called his work by a name which must have 
suggested to every educated man of his time the pastoral of 
Sannazaro is not clear, unless indeed he intended by the 
loan to emphasize the poetical portions of the novel. To 
be sure he very likely gave it no title at all, since he left it 
incomplete at his death, and in manuscript, and the editors 
may have called it after the country which is the scene of 
the action. Yet in choosing that country for his back- 
ground the author must have realized the discord he would 
create, in departing so far from the traditional conception of 
Arcadian life, and in placing in its peaceful midst his epi- 
sodes of feudalism and erotic adventure. The most original 
part of his book is, confessedly, the development of the comic 
element in the history of Dametas and his family, and the 
taste of a genuine Shaksperian public is reflected in the 
rough jokes and buffooneries of this country clown. 

In enumerating the various sources, Spanish, Italian, 
French, or Greek, which were drawn upon to supply 
material for the Arcadia, we must not forget the occasional 
flashes of independent observation and the views of real 
life, which from time to time unconsciously obtrude on the 
assumed ideality of the romance. For a romance it is, in 
its present form, an incongruous pastime of daily recrea- 
tions, but which — had the author foreseen its publication 



33% ENGLISH NOVELS. 

— might have been molded into the shape of a regular 
novel and have been to English fiction what the Astree was 
to French — a starting point for a new departure. But the 
departure was never made, and later stories show slight 
traces of its presence, while Greene's Arcadia, published 
three years before Sidney's, is a pastoral pure and simple, 
and in no way belies the name it bears. 

If Sidney had no followers in the line of ideal fiction, he 
had at least a rival with the novel readers of the time in 
the person of Thomas Lodge. The latter's Rosalind, which 
appeared about the same time as the Arcadia, resembles 
the latter in its essence, being an attempt to fuse in one 
narrative the best features of the heroic and pastoral school 
of fiction. It is possible that Lodge may have received 
some useful hints from the efforts of Sidney, but at all 
events his story is more compact, more logical, and conse- 
quently more readable. Certain situations of the romances 
of chivalry are here repeated and the pastoral notion of the 
heroine's disguise in man's dress plays a prominent part in 
the plot. 

All of these works of English literature — which form 
what may be called the imaginative fiction of their day — 
have been too often analyzed and commentated to require 
any further mention now and here. But there existed along 
with them another style of insular romancing which has not 
been so frequently enlarged upon by modern writers. It is 
true this style is not so important as the former, since it in 
no way asserted any originality in intention, nor aspired to 
be the beginning of a new school. We refer to the appear- 
ance in England of stories of adventure containing a very 
strong flavor of the picaresco tales of Spain. One of these 
stories, a tract or pamphlet, by Chettle, published in 1595, 
to which he gave the name of Piers Plainnes Seaven Yeres 
Prentiship, is an unmistakable witness to the presence of 
Lazarillo de Tonnes. After the manner of the Spanish 



ENGLISH NOVELS. 339 

rogue, Chettle's hero was bound out for seven years, in 
Crete and Thrace, to a courtier, a money-lender, and a 
miser successively. 

Less apparent, however, are the forerunners of Thomas 
Nash's Unfortunate Traveller, or, The Life of Jack Walton, 
which was printed in 1594. Very likely much of the credit 
for its peculiar tone is to be given to Nash himself, and not 
to any special literary fashion with which he may have been 
acquainted. He must have read, with Chettle, the English 
translation of Lazarillo de Tormes, published in 1586, and 
in his Anatomie of Absurditie, in 1589, he shows his literary 
animus in denouncing most vigorously the popular ro- 
mances, which perpetuated in prose the fantastic deeds of 
the mediaeval heroes of France. Accordingly, a few years 
later, he was all equipped to bring out what he would claim 
was a true romance, and show up by its pictures of true life 
the ridiculous travesties of the chapbooks of chivalry. Yet 
white the spirit of Lazarillo de Tormes no doubt counted 
for something in his reform of fiction, his plan and inci- 
dents have a strange likeness to Guzman de Alfarache, the 
junior of Jack Walton by five years. 

This same Jack Walton begins his life-work in the gen- 
uine picaro style by playing practical jokes on various 
victims. But he has in his temperament much more of 
humor than of the spirit of revenge, and his wits are not 
sharpened, like those of his Spanish colleague, by the grind- 
ing of hunger. After a while this happy-go-lucky youth 
enters the service of the Earl of Surrey, and accompanies 
that nobleman in his travels on the Continent. They vary 
the tour usually followed at that time, and make for their 
goal, Italy, through Holland and Germany. Here some of 
the customs of the people furnish amusement to our Britons, 
who are especially entertained by the beer-drinking and 
the Latin speeches which form a part of the social recep- 
tions in the Fatherland. Finally they reach Venice and the 



34° ENGLISH NOVELS. 

real rascality of the story begins. Jack changes places 
with his master, and passes himself off for the earl. But 
he soon runs into the meshes of the law, is arrested as a 
counterfeiter, and clapped into prison. There he finds a 
woman, a fellow-captive, makes love to her and, after their 
release, travels with her as far as Florence, where they meet 
the true earl. The latter has grown weary of his wander- 
ings and soon leaves for England, while Jack sets out for 
Rome. 

The imperial city does not awe our scamp in the least. 
Its manners and even its monuments appear to him highly 
ridiculous, and he avails himself of every chance to make 
fun of them. Suddenly, however, he is made an involun- 
tary witness of a most blood-curdling scene of violence 
and crime, and is seized by the police as being the real 
criminal. But an English exile saves his innocent neck 
from the halter, and our picaro seizes the occasion to 
deliver a set oration against the allurements of foreign 
travel. Now some Jews make him a prisoner, but a hanger- 
on of the Papal court obtains his liberty from them and 
reduces him to even a worse slavery. From this he escapes 
with his female friend, who has found him again, and sets 
out once more with her for the North. At Bologna they 
come upon the real murderer in the affray at Rome and 
hear him confess his guilt, a scene which calls out a few 
moral reflections on murder, while inducing the couple to 
profit by this example and by their experience. So they are 
formally married at last, and proceed on their way to join 
the English army in Flanders. 

Nash's notion was clearly to write a picaresco story, and 
to make his Jack its hero. He has kept to the subject 
well, and has handled his matter with as much skill as his 
rivals of the South. But he failed to attract the attention 
they did, for reasons which pertain to style, fashion, and 
locality. The Spaniards had more taste than Nash. They 



ENGLISH NOVELS. 341 

painted their pictures of rough life with more care and 
with a better shading. They were thus better artists 
than he, and art had become the watchword of the later 
Renaissance. English literature also was neither esteemed 
nor much known on the Continent, and consequently 
did not often receive the honor of translation. The 
current of civilization continued to set wholly from the 
South to the North long after Nash and his ilk had passed 
away, and no considerable reflux made itself felt until the 
days of Pope and De Foe. Should there ever arise, how- 
ever, the question of priority in the description of Italian 
travel, or in satire of that land at the time of her decadence, 
the Englishman must be awarded the palm, lot Jack Walton 
was published half a decade before Guzman de Alfarache. 
Still it may be questioned in view of this coincidence in 
the general theme of the two novels, whether there were 
not in existence, by the last quarter of the sixteenth century, 
picaresco tales, either in Italian or Spanish, which may 
have suggested their plan to both Nash and Aleman, since 
after making only a moderate estimate of the popularity of 
Lazarillo de Tormes, it seems almost impossible that its idea 
and adventures were not imitated for two score years by 
any writer in all Europe. 

There is another interesting point to be noticed in regard 
to this outbreak of the. picaresco novel in England. The 
hero of the Spanish stories was a self-conscious sharper, a 
hypocrite who proposed to get his living out of the evil 
side of human nature. Not so with the English picaro. 
He was an adventurer, to be sure, but an adventurer for 
the sake of adventure, like his contemporaries on the sea, 
Frobisher and Hawkins. He had no enmity toward his 
fellow-man, he had no revenge to take on society. He did 
not feel oppressed, and forced back on his own cunning to 
win his daily bread from the objects of his contempt or 
envy. He plays jokes on greenhorns, but the jokes do not 



342 ENGLISH NOVELS. 

entail suffering. He laughs at the world, but his laugh is 
loud and hearty, too boisterous to end in a sneer. And 
then he shows true indignation at vice, provided the vice is 
not his own, and fires the gallery with his exordiums on 
virtue illustrated by contrast. 

In short we have in Jack Walton and his race that type 
of the rollicking, rough Englishman of the lower class, who 
delighted in life for the fun it afforded him, and took a 
hearty interest equally in clownish horse-play or perilous 
adventures. At the bottom he is a solid, sound, uncor- 
rupted Anglo-Saxon, whose sins are the result of his 
ungoverned temperament, and not of his perverted moral 
judgment. Contrast Jack Walton with little Lazaro or 
Guzman, more famous than he, and the fidelity of his 
creator to his own insular type of rascal and jester is 
altogether evident. By this study of his own race, and the 
independent conclusions he draws from his observations, 
Nash attained the honor of the originator of a literary type ; 
for Tom Jones could never have descended in direct line 
of ancestry from a pimp of Toledo or a sneak-thief of 
Seville. 

Of such an amount is the novelistic baggage of England 
previous to the seventeenth century — one court story, two 
mixtures of the chivalrous and the pastoral, one picaresco 
of the English stripe. With the consideration of these four 
specimens our review of the novel in the period of time 
which was allotted to this history properly ends. The 
ancestors of the later European novel have been named 
and visited, and their family relations have been approxim- 
ately indicated. Yet it may not be unacceptable to the 
diligent reader to find in this true narrative the account 
also of the only other movement in novel writing, which is 
known to have existed previous to the year 1600. At least 
such an account will have the merit of brevity, even if in 
itself it may lack attractiveness. 



CHINESE NOVELS. 343 

The Occidentals have been sufficiently humiliated in 
recent years by the proofs of their inferiority in inventions 
and discoveries to the great nation of the East, to bear with 
resignation the idea that the novel, as a completed form of 
fiction, was known to the Chinese before it was conceived 
in the West. From the thirteenth to the middle of the 
sixteenth century, or thereabouts, there was considerable 
activity in this department of literature in old Cathay, and 
the novels which were then written have been handed down 
to the present day in the same stage of development they 
reached three centuries ago. Their mission was clearly 
the didactic one. The great mass of Chinese fiction has 
always been addressed to the lowest social circles, and is 
still noted for its coarseness and indecency, rather than for 
its narrative qualities. So to offset the corrupting influence 
of such scenes the more serious disciples of Confucius pro- 
duced a set of serious works, which were intended to act on 
the popular mind as so much moral instruction. Some few 
also were designed for imparting the facts of history. 

The number of these learned or hortatory compositions 
is perhaps a dozen. Of the dozen some eight are known 
to Europeans, and have been accorded the honors of trans- 
lation into French and English. The originals are anony- 
mous, for fiction was not highly enough regarded among 
the ruling classes of Chinese society to be able to recom- 
mend to public esteem even those writers who acted as 
preachers against evil — the worthy Thsai-tsen, or " authors 
having genius." The purpose of these stories is distinc- 
tively edifying. They are divided into two classes — one 
designed to teach history, the other morals. The specimens 
of the first class are very crude from our standpoint of 
what fiction should be, because the fusion of romance and 
history in them is so imperfect. The manner of composing 
them was simply to take an historical background, to place 
in it the correct historical characters and events, and to fill 



344 CHINESE NOVELS. 

in the gaps with incidents of romantic invention. In this 
way it was hoped to make chronological facts more tooth- 
some to the rising generation o£ Nanking and Pekin. It 
may have done so, for tastes differ exceedingly as one 
makes the journey around the world, but to the Western 
palate these Oriental sweetmeats are both tough and acrid. 

The second class, where moral edification is the object, 
is better appreciated among the barbarians of Europe. 
Our own literature occasionally strays into the field of 
exhortation, and we are often taught by shining examples 
in fiction that virtue and intelligence not only bring happi- 
ness to their fortunate possessors, but that they are also 
liable to be rewarded by advancement even in temporal 
affairs. So we are somewhat prepared for a few leading 
precepts from the antipodes, and have means for compar- 
ing them with the moral teachings of our own novelists. 
But the Thsai-tsen do not stop short with harangues to 
mankind to be good. They are too well stocked with 
knowledge for that, and into their ethical tracts they stuff 
such a wealth of learning about Chinese mythology, his- 
tory, and folk-lore, that their pages often become too erudite 
for the ignorant commoner of European extraction. Still 
he can, by judicious omissions, easily follow the plot of 
the story, and appreciate the details concerning the life 
and customs of the country, which are incidentally pre- 
sented in the allusions to the surroundings of the leading 
characters. 

The Chinese novels which have been done into Occiden- 
tal vernaculars, and which were probably the best samples 
of their kind inasmuch as they have won this attention, 
may be designated in general as novels of manners, rather 
than as character studies. Their tone is optimistic. The 
good prosper in them, and attain success by the employ- 
ment of their higher mental endowments. The wicked may 
go on prosperously for a time, but at last they are brought 



CHINESE NOVELS. 345 

low. One is distantly reminded of Dickens' procedure in 
these respects. In other words, the plan of a Chinese 
novel of this type is that of a melodrama. The three lead- 
ing actors are the hero, heroine, and the heavy villain who 
persecutes them, but is baffled, as all heavy villains must 
be, by their final union. The triumph of the righteous, 
however, is obtained less by physical force than in the 
Western Hemisphere, for the basely calumniated Celestial 
conquers his enemies by the remarkable development of his 
intellectual fiber, and wins his bride by the steady pursuit 
of knowledge. 

So we are not surprised to find that the story of The 
Fortunate Union, translated toward 1826 by Sir John 
Davis, celebrates the erudition of a young man of good 
family, who has passed an excellent civil service examin- 
ation, and who is far-and-away the most upright and culti- 
vated youth of his generation. For such a paragon it was 
naturally hard to find a fitting mate, but one at last is pre- 
sented, whose literary abilities are second only to her 
moral virtues, if indeed they are not first. But the envious 
are busy ever, and the jealous intriguers of Mongolia 
exhaust all their almond-eyed stratagems to prevent the 
union of these embodiments of the true, the good, and the 
beautiful. For a while their tricks avail, thereby affording 
us of the Occident many interesting details of the life, 
manners, and sentiments of respectable people in China. 
At the end, of course the villains are foiled, and virtue 
appropriates to itself its temporal reward. 

Perhaps a better known specimen of the Chinese novel 
is one of the latest, belonging, without much doubt, to the 
first half of the fifteenth century. It is called The Two 
Educated Girls, and was done into French in i860 by Stan- 
islas Julien. A nobleman of the imperial court rejoices in 
a daughter, Chan-tai, who, at the age of ten, robs the older 
poets of their laurels by her verses on the White Swallows. 



346 CHINESE NOVELS. 

This wonderful achievement reaches the ears of the 
emperor and prompts him to demand of her father her pres- 
ence at the capital. No sooner has Chan-tai reached that 
enchanting place, than the talents enshrined in her modesty- 
gain for her the esteem and admiration of all its inhabi- 
tants. In the poetical contests which invite her skill, her 
grace and learning inspire the good and frown down the 
arrogant. The prizes are all hers. The natural sequence 
of such continued triumph is the jealousy of the discom- 
fited rivals. They unite to slander her to their imperial 
master, but he only rails at their insinuations. 

Now, the second maiden of learned parts arrives on the 
scene ; not another scion of a noble house, but a plebeian 
villager, whose erudition has broken out at the age of 
twelve. This impassioned rustic is not, however, without 
the germs of tender emotions. The literary compositions 
of Ping, a young man renowned for his prose style, ensnare 
her budding affections, while her lines make no less an 
impression on his melting heart. In this state of rapture 
our enamored village genius is summoned to court, where 
Chan-tai welcomes her, protects her, and forms with her 
what is destined to prove a lasting friendship. So the narra- 
tive proceeds to develop the accomplishments of its heroes, 
and decry the envy of their detractors ; and after it has 
devoted two-thirds of its length to this task, another won- 
der of the masculine gender meets Chan-tai by accident. 
He is her fate and she his. A poetical courtship ensues, 
and the parchments suffer, until a general wedding unites 
the couples of the virtuous and learned, and all live happy 
ever after. 

It will be seen that the Eastern predecessor of Les Femmes 
savantes indulges its readers more in a description of man- 
ners and literature than it does in the elaboration of a plot. 
Others of the Chinese novels possess more of this latter 
requisite ; or, if not more, the plot appears earlier at least 



CHINESE NOVELS. 347 

in the romance. Thus, in The Two Cousins, which belongs 
to the middle of the fifteenth century, and which de 
Remusat turned into French in 1826, there are more inci- 
dents and a greater excitation of the sympathy. For the 
jealous and those who persecute the good invent a larger 
number of schemes to baffle the righteous cause, and force 
true love to triumph over an increased list of obstacles 
before it reaches the desired union. 

In other novels of this class the domestic life of the upper 
ten plays a greater part, and we listen to the account of the 
fortunes of aspiring young men who seek to win fame in 
the state examinations, through which the best minds of 
the nation rise to the highest places in the government of 
the country. The works of this kind have a greater inter- 
est for us, because of the glimpses they afford of the real 
spirit of the great people of the East, but very likely they 
were not any more attractive on this account to the public 
for which they were written. Yet it is noticeable that what- 
ever the theme or the incidents of the novel, the connect- 
ing thread, love, which gives it its plot, is not the passion 
with which we are familiar in our own works of fiction. It 
may grow, to be sure, into something more intimate and 
tender, but at first the mutual affection of hero and heroine, 
as pictured in the romances of Confucian China, is born of 
esteem for character and of admiration for literary gifts. 

It is hardly worth while to comment longer on this style 
of Oriental fiction, for it adds nothing to our conception of 
novelistic composition. The construction of the works 
which represent it, is, indeed, most elementary, resemblingnn 
that respect the earlier plebeian examples of Greco-Roman 
fiction. Like the story of Clitophon and Leucippe, or the Baby- 
lonica of Jamblichus, the narrative of The Fortunate Union, 
or The Two Educated Girls, consists of a series of adven- 
tures in private and public life, which have borrowed the 
skeleton of a love story, not only to make themselves inter- 



34§ CHINESE NOVELS. 

esting, but also in the case of the Chinese novels to render 
more agreeable their moral instructions. The principal 
motive power in the action of the story is also the same in 
the fiction of the Sophists and the followers of Confucius, 
namely, the persecution of the lovers. In Greece, how- 
ever, their arch-enemy was Fate; in China, this evil spirit is 
personified in a man. For this reason there seem to be 
plausible grounds on which to base the theory that the 
Chinese novel is a melodrama in a lengthened form, and 
that the ultimate origins of it are to be found in the popu- 
lar theater of the nation. The fiction which these serious 
tales displaced was coarse and vulgar, and very like such 
plays as our own mediaeval farces — the supposed starting- 
point of the Spanish realistic stories — in both subject and 
manner. Like both the Greek and the Spanish tales of 
individual experience there is in the Chinese novel no notion 
of psychological study. They are simply descriptions of 
customs and events. They are earlier in time than our 
European novels of the Renaissance, but, as they shared in 
the life of all other creations of that motionless empire, 
when once created they never progressed, and Chinese 
fiction, together with Chinese art and Chinese thought, 
remains stationary, fixed at the very point it reached five 
hundred years ago. 



NOTES. 



Chapter I. 



The definition of novel given here was derived from Rhode's 
book on the Greek novel, where it is assumed that a plot is essen- 
tial to this particular kind of prose fiction. The more recent 
dictionaries of the English language, including the Imperial and 
Century, also recognize the essential elements which distinguish 
the novel from its fellows in fiction. 

Chapters II.— III. 

For a general history of the subject of these chapters, see E. 
Rhode's Der griechische Roman und seine Vorlaufer. Leipzig, 
1876. 

For the Nimrod fragment, see the scientific periodical Hermes, 
vol. xxviii, pp. 161-193. 

For further bibliography and other analyses of the novels see 
Dunlop's History of Fiction, revised by Henry Wilson, Bonn's 
Standard Library. London, 1888. For English translations of 
Heliodorus, Tatius, and Longus, see Rowland Smith's Greek 
Romances in Bohn's Library. The selections given here are 
from Smith's rendering. For Xenophon of Ephesus there is no 
English translation, but a German version may be found in G. A. 
Burger's Sdmmtliche Werke, vol. ii. pp. 436 seq. Gottingen, 
1844. 

The remaining Greek novels and fragments are not available to 
modern readers outside of their Latin form, excepting the story of 
Apollonius of Tyre in the Gesta Romanorum in Bohn's Library. 

For the imitations of the Byzantine period, see Karl Krum- 
bacher's Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur. Munich, 1891. 

349 



35° NOTES. 

Consult also Archiv filr das Studium der neueren Sprachen, vol. 
1. pp. I seq. In the Contemporary Review, vol. xxx. pp. 858 seq., 
is an article on the early Christian romances. 

The influence of Greek novels on mediaeval French literature is, 
discussed in G. Paris' La Litter ature frangaise au moyen dge, ch. 
3, and Bibliography, 2d ed. Paris, 1890. 

For Boccaccio's sources see M. Landau's Quellen des Decameron, 
2d ed. Stuttgart, 1884. Stories ii. 6 and v. 3 do not seem to me 
to be of Greek origin. The activity of the Greek novel at the 
Renaissance is treated in Dunlop, and in H. Korting's Geschichte 
desfranzosische?i Romans im xvii. Jahrhundert, vol. i. pt. i. ch. 2. 
Oppeln, 1891. 

Chapter IV. 

For the bibliography in this chapter see the one in G. Paris' 
La Litterature frangaise au moyen dge, already cited. 

Analyses of the Breton prose romances, of Perceforest, and of the 
prose versions of some of the heroic epic poetry are also given in 
Dunlop. 

Chapter V. 

A general account of the Spanish romances of chivalry is 
to be found in Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature. See 
Index. 

On the origin of Amadis de Gaula see Th. Braga's Historia da 
Litter atur a Portugueza — Amadis de Gaula, Oporto, 1873, and 
L. Braunfel's Kritischer Versuch iiber den Roman Amadis von 
Gallien. Leipzig, 1876. 

The work of Joao Lobeira is discussed in the Zeitschrift fur 
romanische Philologie, vol. iv. pp. 347 seq., and in Gibber's 
Grundriss der rom. Philologie, vol. ii. pp. 167-190, 216-226. 

The text of Montalvo's Amadis de Gaula is printed in the Bib- 
Hot ec a de Autores Espaiioles, vol. xl. Libros de Caballerias. The 
introduction to this volume, by Pascual de Gayangos, contains a 
study of the history of the romances of Spain, and a list of them 
extending clown to the year 1800. 

The best English translation of Amadis, considerably abridged, 
is that of Robert Southey. London, 1803. 







NOTES. 351 

Chapter VI. 

See Ticknor in the German translation by Julius, with supplement 
by Wolf, and Gayangos in the Biblioteca, for bibliography of this 
chapter. Dunlop gives a meager analysis of Amadis proper, but 
is quite full for the sequels, the Pahnerins and Tirante the 
White. 

Brunet's Manuel du Libraire furnishes notes for the foreign 
translations under the different titles. 

The Ticknor collection of books preserved in the Boston Public 
Library is the best collection of Spanish books accessible to Amer- 
icans. I failed, however, to find in it Lepolemo, which Ticknor 
states explicitly was in his library. 

The best English rendering of Palmerin de Inglaterra is 
Southey's. London, 1807. 

Chapter VII. 

For a general view of the subject consult A. Gaspary's Ge- 
schichte der italienischen Literatur, preferably in Zingarelli and 
Rossi's Italian translation. Turin, 1887-91. It contains also an 
abundant bibliography. See also J. A. Symonds' Renaissance in 
Italy. 

On the eclogue in mediaeval literature consult F. Macri-Leone's 
La Bucolica latina,nel xiv. 1889. G. Korting's Boccaccio's Leben 
und Werke is the authority on that writer. 

Sannazaro's Arcadia is critically edited by M. Scherillo. Turin, 
1888. Compare also F. Torraco's La Materia dell' Arcadia. 
Citta di Castello, 1888. Symonds gives excellent translations 
from the Arcadia in vol. ii. of his Italian Literature. 

Poliziano's drama is well described in Symonds. Symonds' 
Catholic Reaction contains a long study of Tasso. 

For Guarini see V. Rossi's Battista Guarini ed II Pastor Fido, 
Turin, 1886 ; also Symonds' Catholic Reactio7i. 

The opening episode of the Pastor Fido is given by Pausanias, 
book viii. ch. 21. See Bohn's edition. 

For the novelistic ideas and influence of these works see 
Korting's Geschichte, etc., vol. i. pt. i. ch. 4, and Index. 
Dunlop analyzes only the Arcadia and, unsatisfactorily, the 
Ameto. 



35 2 NOTES. 

Chapter VIII. 

For the authors mentioned in this chapter see Ticknor's History 
of Spanish Literature, Th. Braga's Historia da Litteratura Por- 
tugueza, Oporto, 1870; Grober's Grundriss, vol. ii. pp. 287-304. 
For Ribeiro see in Braga's series, Bernardim Ribeiro e os 
Bucolistas. Oporto, 1872. 

For Montemayor, see J. G. < $>c\\6\\Y\zvr''s forge de Montemayor. 
Halle, 1886. This is a Leipzig dissertation. 

The most available edition of Menina e Moga is in the Obras de 
Bernardim Ribeiro. Lisbon, 1852. 

Diana is published in the series Biblioteca cldsica espahola. 
Barcelona, 1886. 

A more complete analysis of Diana is to be found in Dunlop's 
History of Fiction. 

Chapter IX. 

For the influence of Diana in France, see Korting's Geschichte 
des franz. Romans int xvii Jahr., vol. i. Index. Compare also 
Schonherr. 

For the other novels named in the chapter, see Ticknor's History 
of Spanish Literature, Index, and Supplement by Wolf. Always 
the German edition. Most of the novels mentioned are to be 
found in the Ticknor Library. I was not able to find, however, 
Bernardo de la Vega's El Pastor de Iberia. 

My doubts as to the actual popularity of the Spanish pastoral 
after Diana were suggested by the fact that the copy of Bovadilla's 
N imp has y Pastor es de Henares in the Ticknor Library was never 
read. The copy was printed in 1587, and I had the honor of 
cutting some of its opening leaves in June, 1890. 

Chapter X. 

See Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, Index ; also 
H. Korting's Geschichte des franz. Romans, vol. i. pt. i. ch. 3. 

For the farce Le Gargonet VAveugle see fahrbuch fur rom. 
wideng. Litteratur, vol. vi. (1865) pp. 163-172. The manuscript 
illustrations are mentioned in a letter by J. J. Jusserand to The 
AthencEum for 1888, p. 883. 



NOTES. 353 

For Lazarillo de Tor me s see A. Morel-Fatio's t,tudes sur 
VEspagne, Premiere Serie. Paris, 1888. The text for Lazarillo 
and Guzman is given in the Biblioteca de Autores Espaiioles, 
vol. iii. A study of Lazarillo from the sociological standpoint 
appeared in La Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. lxxxvi. pp. 870 seq. 

Dunlop's analysis of Guzman may be compared to the one 
given here. 

Chapter XI. 

For the Spanish novels cited see Ticknor's History, Index. 

For the English novel see J. J. Jusserand's The English Novel 
in the Time of Shakespeare. London, 1890. 

For analyses of the novels mentioned see their authors' works, 
Dunlop's History of Fiction, and Bayard Tuckerman's A History 
of English Prose Fiction, ch. 3. New York, 1882. 

For the Chinese novels see the prefaces of the translations men- 
tioned : Les Deux Cousines, by Remusat, Paris, 1826 ; Deuxjeunes 
files lettres, by S. Julien, Paris, i860; and La Revue contempo- 
raine for i860. 



NDEX. 



Abencerrages, The last of the. See 
following and Hita 

Abindarraez and Jarifa, Story of, 
264-6, 331 

Abraham, the Jew, etc., Sermon on, 
73 

Academies, Italian, 221 

Achilles Tatius, 63 ; Clitophon and 
Leucippe, 63-7 ; sequels to, 78 ; 
imitated by Eustathius, 79 ; by 
Tasso, 227, 347 

iEschylus, 15 

^Esop, Fables in Greek novels, 65 

Age of Gold, in Antiquity, 70 ; in 
Italy, 205-6, 215-6, 219, 233, 
257 

Aimeric of Cahors, 133 

Aimon de Varennes, 80 

Aleman, Mateo ; his Guzman, 34 ; 
first part, 314-7, 318 ; second 
part, 319- 22 , 339, 341, 342 

Alexander, Wars of, 23, 31 ; le- 
gends of, 109, 118, 119, 120, 305 

Alphonso of Portugal, 133 

Alphonso, Infant Don, 131 

Alphonso the Wise, 125 

Alva, Family of, 245 ; Duke of, 279 

Amadas et Idoine, 128 

Amadis of Gaul, 8-9, 15, 18, 26, 
34, 38, 86, 92, 96, 105, 106-7, 108, 
112, ti6, 120, 122, 123, 125, 127, 
128, 131-62, 164, 165, 166, 167, 
168, 169-70 ; in France, 170-1 ; 
in Italy, 17 1-2 ; in England and 
Germany, 172-3, 177, '178, 180, 
181, 182, 183, 188, 190, 193, 195, 
196, 197, 198, 237, 238, 239, 255, 
257, 269, 281, 284, 289, 299, 322, 
3 2 4, 327, 331 



Amadis of Greece {de Grecid), 168 
Aminta, See Tasso, T. 
Amyot, Bishop, 58, 76, 81, 281 
Anatomie of Absurditie. See Nash 
Andromache. See Hector 
Antonines, The, 49 
Antonio de Villegas, 264 
Anton ius Diogenes ; his Marvelous 

Things, etc., 35-7, 38, 39, 42-3, 

44, 47-8, 49, 325 
Apollo nio. See following 
Apollonius of Tyre, 48-9, 54-7, 80, 

123 
Arcadia, Greene's, 338 ; Sannazaro's, 

see Sannazaro ; Sidney's, 45, 172, 

222, 336=8 
Aretino, 205 
Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, 171, 176, 

183, 205, 215, 226, 229, 337 
Aristander and Callithea. See Con- 

stantine Manasses 
Aristophanes, 74 
Armada, The, 332 
Arthur, King, 5, 6-7, 13, 14, 90, 98, 

99-100, 105", 106, 107, 108, 109, 

116, 118, 120, 126, 127, 133, 142, 

147, 172, 173, 176 
Arthurian legends. See above 
A strife, The. See D'Urfe 
A lata. See Chateaubriand 
Aucassin et Nicole tte, 134, 209 
Auto, The, 241, 242, 250, 256, 281 
Ayala, Pedro Lopez de, 132, 135 

Babylonica, The. See Jamblichus 
Balzac, Honore de, 19, 287, 322 
Bayard, Chevalier, 127 ; horse in 

Renaud de Montauban, 155 
Beatrice, Empress, 94 



355 



35^ 



INDEX. 



"Beau te'nebreux, Le," 152-3 

Belle Doette, 88, 89, 92 

Bergeries de Juliette, Les. See Nico- 
las de Montreux 

Bernardo de la Vega, 278 

Bernardo del Carpio, 124 

Boabdil, King, 327. See Hita 

Boccaccio, Decameron, 80-81, 176, 
202, 204, 208, 212 ; Ameto, 208- 
14, 215, 216, 218, 219, 221, 222; 
Ninfale Fiesolano, 222-4, 226, 
227, 228, 234, 237 ; in Spain, 245, 
248, 254, 260, 282 

Borgia, Lucretia, 205 

Boscan, 244 

Boucher, 200 

Bovadilla, B. Goncalez de, 277-78 

Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, 12 

Cabal leria Celestial, La. See San 

Pedro, H. de 
California, 165 
Camoens, Lusiads, 326 
Cancionero de Baena, 132 
Cartesianism, 2S3 
Cathay, 17, 343 
Celesiina, The, 254, 263-4, 312 
Cervantes, 12, 17, 18, 38, 39, 81, 86, 

167, 169, 173, 174, 176, 189, 193, 

195, 198-9, 271, 272, 273-4; 

Galatea, 275-7, 278, 280, 281, 

303, 313, 327 

Chareas and Callirrhoe. See Chari- 
ton 

Chapuis, G., 192 

Charicles and Drosilla. See Nicetas 
Eugenianus 

Chariton, 67-69, 70, 81 

Charlemagne, Epics on, 5, 13, 14, 
56, 93-4, 108, 109, 110-17, 120, 
124, 133, 134, 148, 155, 172 

Charles V., of Spain, 165, 177, 192, 
239, 257 ; age of, 290-1, 293, 
298, 307 

Charles, Duke of Orleans, 129 

Chateaubriand, 200, 332 

Chatelaine de Vergi, La, 96, 97, 98 

Chettle, 338-39 

Chevalier au lion, Le. See follow- 
ing 

Chretien of Troyes, 99-100 ; Iwain, 
101-5, 106-7, H4i n8, 126, 148 



Christianity, Effect on Greek novel, 
32, 77, 78 ; on mediaeval poetry, 89 

Cicero, 214 

Cid, The, 124 

Clareo y Florisea. See Nunez de 
Reinoso 

Clitophon andLeucippe. See Achilles 
Tatius 

Confucius, Disciples, authors of Chi- 
nese novel, 343 

Constantine, Emperor, 48 

Constantine Manasses, 79 

Constantinople, Fall of, 156, 164, 189 

Contreras, Jeronimo de, 324-5 

Conversations, Courtly, 141, 143-4, 
149, 187, 191, 270 

Corneille, 283 

Cortez, 292 

Cronica General. See Alphonso the 
Wise 

Cyrano de Bergerac, 38, 325 

Dante, Inferno, 150 ; eclogues, 208 ; 

Vita Ntiova, 209, 21 1, 214, 333 
Dap/mis and Chloe, 49, 71-6, 203, 

281 
Darinel. See Chapuis 
Davis, Sir John. See Fortunate 

Union, The 
Decameron, The. See Boccaccio 
De Foe, 341 
Descriptions of combats, emotions, 

nature. See under Realism and 

Nature 
DesEssarts, N. de Herberay, 170-1, 

. I72 

Diana of Poitiers, 192 

Diana, The. See Montemayor 

Diana Enamorada, The. See Gil 
Polo 

Dickens, 345 

Diniz, King, 124, 132-3, 240 

Dion Chrysostom, 75 

Disguised personages, 156, 159, 219, 
241, 251, 252, 254, 256-7, 269 

Don Belianis de Grecia. See Fer- 
nandez, J. 

Don Florisando, 167, 170 

Don Quixote. See Cervantes 

Dosicles and Rhodantes. See Theo- 
doras Prodromus 

Dumas, The Three Musketeers, 82 



INDEX. 



357 



D'Urfe, H., 18, 222, 230, 233, 236, 
282-3, 334, 338 

East, Influence of legends of, on the 

West, 90, 109-10 
Eleanor of Poitou, 99 
Eli due, 95 

Elizabeth, Queen, 281, 335 
Encina, Juan de la, 242-3, 250 
Enciso, B. Lopez de, 277 
Entree de Spagne, 111-12, 1 18 
Ephesiaca, The. See Xenophon of 
r Ephesus 
Eracle. See Gautier of Arras 
Esplandian, Las Sergas de, 164-7 
Etymologies, Popular, 62 
Euphnes. See Lyly 
Euphuism, 66, 275. See Gongorism 
Eustathius, 79, 262 

Farce, The French, 296 ; The Boy 

and the Blind Man, 297, 298-9 ; 

Chinese, 348 
Fate. See Tyche 
Feliciano da Silva. See Florisel de 

Niquea 
Ferdinand and Isabella, 17, 167, 

238, 286 
Fernan Gonzalez, 125 
Fernandez, Jeronimo, 193-5 
Ferrara, Court of Este family at, 226 
Ferrus, Pedro, 132 
Fielding, 5, 18, 287, 316, 342 {Tom 

Jones) 
Fierabras, 113-14, 118, 155 
Filida. See Montalvo, L. G. de 
Flore and Blanchejleur, 80, 123, 133 
Florian, 277, 332 

Florimont. See Aimon de Varennes 
Florisel de Niquea, 168-9 
Flotir, 180 
Folklore in Greek and mediaeval 

novels, 62, 65, 151, 153, 155, 188 
Fortuna, Fortune. See Tyche 
Fortunate Union, The, 345, 347 
Francis I., 170, 334 
Frederick Barbarossa, 95 
Frobisher, 341 

Ganelon, 148 

Garcilaso de la Vega, 243 ; eclogues, 
243-7, 249 



Garter, Order of the, founded, 174 
Gautier of Arras, Eracle, 80, 95 ; 

Ille et Galeron, 94-5, 134, 174 
Gesta Romanorum, The, 56 
Gil Polo, Gaspar, 272-4 
Giovanni del Virgilio ; eclogues 

with Dante, 208 
Godfrey of Bouillon, 135 
Goethe, 19, 283 
Gomberville, 18 

Gongorism, 269, 275. See Euphuism 
Gonsalvo de Cordova, 291 
Gower, 55 

Grail, The Holy, 6, 98, 100, 105, 134 
Gran Conquista de Ultramar, 125 
Greek poetry ; influence of elegiac on 

fiction, 41-2, 65, 179, 203, 223, 

228 ; epic on novels, 15, 22, 24, 

27, 40 
Greene, R. See Arcadia 
Guarini ; his Pastor Fido, 18, 106, 

230-33, 234, 235, 282 
Gui de Warwick, 173 
Guigemar. See Marie de France 
Guillaume de Dole, 96, 98, 134 
Guillaume de Palerme, 95-6 
Guzman de Alfarache. See Aleman 

Hawkins, 241 

Hawthorne ; his Marble Faun, 215 

Hector, 15, 26, 40 

Heliodorus ; his Theagenes and 

Char idea, 15, 34, 57-63, 65, 78, 

79, 81 
Henry II. of England, 90, 99 
Henry IV. of Spain, 242 
Henry IV. of France, 281 
Heredia, The actor, 318 
Historical Novel ; in Greece, 69 ; 

in France, 96, 98 ; in Spain, 189- 

9°, 325, 33 x ; hi China, 343 "4. 
Hita, Gines Perez de ; his Civil 

Wars of Granada, first part, 326- 

30 ; second part, 332 
Homer ; in the Greek novels ,65, 69 
Horace, 243 
Hotel de Rambouillet, 144, 190, 230, 

270, 331 
Hugo, U Homme qui rit, 316 
Hundred Years' War, The, 129, 334 
Huon de Bordeaux, 110-11, 134 
Hurtado, Luis. i8q 



358 



INDEX. 



Hysmenias and Hysmene. See 
Eustathius 

Ille et Galtron. See Gautier of 

Arras 
Index, The. See following 
Inquisition, The ; in Spain, 195, 

197, 294, 299, 311, 313, 314 ; in 

Italy, 205 
Isabella of Seville, 352 
Iwain. See Chretien of Troyes 

Jack Walton. See Nash 

Jamblichus, 49-52, 65, 68, 81, 347 

Jean de Paris, 98 

John's Day, St.; in London, 174; 
in Granada, 328 

Jourdain de Blaie, 56 

Julien, Stanislas. See Two Edu- 
cated Gir/s, The 

La Calprenede, 18 

Lady of the Lake, The, 147 

La Fayette, Mine, de, 18 ; la Prin- 

cesse de Cleves, 98 ; Zayde, 331 
Lai, The, 89-91, 93, 94, 95, 99, 

118, 133 
Lancelot and Guinevere, Story of, 

etc., 6, 105, 116, 124, 126, 127, 

132, 133, 134, 147 
Lara, The Seven Lords of, 124 
Lazarillo de Tonnes, 1 1, 34, 289, 

294, 295, 296, 298, 299-311 ; 

sequel to, 311-12 ; Luna's sequel, 

312, 316, 317, 322, 332, 338, 339, 

341, 342 
Leandro el Bel, 197 
Le Notre, 76 
Leo X., 205, 242 
Lepole/no, 195-7 
Le Sage, 18, 287, 322 
Lisuarte de Grecia, 167-8, 1 70 
Lobeira, Joao, 131, 132, 134 
Lobeira, Vasco de, 131, 132, 135 
Lobo, Fr. de, 280 
Lodge, Th. ; his Rosalind, 338 
Lo Frasso, Ant. de ; his Ten Books 

of the Fortune of Love, 274-5 
London, 147 

Longus. See Daphnis and Chloe 
Lope de Vega ; his Arcadia, 278-9, 

280 



Louis VII., 13, 99 

Louis XL, 14, 31, 129, 192 

Louis XII., 334 

Louis XIII. , 334 

Louis XIV., 76, 322 

Lucian, 38 

Luna, Juan de. See Lazarillo de 

Tormes 
Luxan, Pedro. See Leandro el Bel 
Lyly, 336 

Machiavelli ; his Prince, 204 
Magic, Notions of, 115, 116, 148, 

164, 266, 268 
Mahomet, as idol, 329 
Manoel, Duke of Beja, 252 
March, Ausias, 273 
Margaret of Austria, 318 
Marie de France, 90-1 
Marinism, 52 

Marino, The Cavalier. See above 
Marivaux, 18 

Mark, King. See Tristan 
Marti, Juan, 318 ; sequel to Guzman, 

318-19, 320 
Martorell. See Tirante the White 
Mary of Champagne, 99 
Marvelous Things beyond Thule, 

The. See Antonius Diogenes 
Masuccio, 300, 309 
Maugin, Jean, 179 
Maugis d'Aigremont, 116- 17, 148 
Medici, The, 48, 201 ; Lorenzo di, 

215, 224, 
Mendoza, Hurtado de, 299 
Merlin, 107, 108, 133, 197 
Middle Ages, Society of, 12-13 J 

authors, 85, 105-6, 122-3 ; in 

Spain, 129-30 
Mingo Revulgo, Las Coplas de, 242 
Miracles of the Virgin, The, 84-5 
Moliere, 18 ; les Femmes savantes, 

346 
Montalvo, Garci-Ordofiez de, 135--6, 

142, 144, 148, 154-5, 156, 158, 

159, 160, 161, 163-4, 166-7, 

238, 241. See Amadis of Gaul 
Montalvo, Luis Galvez de, 275 
Montemayor, Jorge de, 259 ; his 

Diana, 18, 79, 238, 239, 245, 255, 

257, 258, 259-71, 273, 274, 275, 

276 ; religious imitation of, 278, 



INDEX. 



359 



280 ; influence of, 281-3, 284, 

33i 

Moraes, Fr. de, 181, 183, 185, 190, 
192. See Pa hn erin of Engla n d 

Moraljzings, in romances of chiv- 
alry, 149 ; in Chinese novels, 343, 

344 

Morgan, The fairy, 118 
Munday, Anthony, 179, 192 
Myriobiblion, The. See Photius 
Mysteries of the Nativity and Pas- 
sion, 84 

Nash, Thomas, 339-41, 342 

Nature, In Daphnis and Chloe, 75 ; 
in ancient bucolics, 206-7 ; in 
mediaeval bucolics, 207-8 ; in 
Sa de Miranda, 248-9; in Diana, 
262-3 

Niccolo of Verona. See Entre'e de 
Spagne 

Nicetas Eugenianus, 79 

Nicolas de Montreux, 234-6, 334 

Nimrod, Story of, 24-5, 26, 28, 30, 
33, 37, 39, 43, 80, 84, 86, 146 

Novella, The, 333 ; influence on 
English fiction, 335 

Novellino, II. See- Masuccio 

Nunez de Reinoso, 67 

Nymphs and Shepherds of the Hen- 
ares, The. See Bovadilla 

Octavian, 114 

Oliver, 1 12-13, T 48 

Opera, Beginnings in Italy, 203, 

225, 226 
Oriana. See Amadis of Gaul 
Orior, 88, 89 

Orlando Furioso, The. See Ariosto 
Orpheus, Myth of, 224, 248 
Osmin and Daraja, Story of, 314-15 
Ovid ; his Metamorphoses, 41, 207, 

223, 229 

Pahnerin de Oliva, 178-9, 181 
Palmerin of England, 27, 180-92, 

193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 257, 269, 

289, 299, 328 
Pas so honroso, of Leon, 130 
Pastorals in romances of chivalry, 

168, 169, 184, 185 
Pastor Fido. See Guarini 



Pastonrelle, The ; in France and 
Provence, 203 ; Portugal, 240 ; 
Spain, 242 

Pausanias, 231 

Pelayo, 125 

Perce for est, 118-20, 134 

Perez, Alonso, 271-2 

Persiles y Sigismunda. See Cer- 
vantes 

Petrarch, 81, 84 ; eclogues, 208, 215 ; 
influence on pastorals, 219, 220 

Philip Augustus, 126 

Philip of Macedonia, 80 

Philip II. of Spain, 170, 192, 198, 
199, 269, 288, 332 

Philip III. of Spain, 271 

Photius, 35, 37, 47, 49, 78, 81 

Picaresco novel, Spirit of, 295 

Picaro, Definition of, 286 

Pierre de Provence, 98 

Pippin, 114 

Pizarro, 286, 292 

Platir, 180 

Plato, 74 

Pleiad, The, 222 

Poe, E. A., 38 

Poliziano, 216, 224; his Orfeo, 225-6, 
228, 233, 237, 261 

Pontano, 219 

Pope, 341 

Portraits, in Amadis of 'Gaul, 150 ; in 
lazarillo de Tormes, 307 

Pre'cieuses, The. See Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet 

Prevost, Abbe, 18 

Primaleon, 179, 180, 181 

Primavera, The. See Lobo 

Provencal poetry ; influence on Ar- 
thurian legends, 99, 100 ; in Portu- 
gal, 133 ; in Spain, 240, 250, 252, 

254 
Pythagoras, 37, 38 

Question de Amor, The, 323-4 

Racine, 18 

Rainattd, 87-8, 89, 92, 134 
Realism ; in Greek novels, 61 ; 
romances of chivalry, combat, 139, 
149-50, 185-6; in the picaresco 
novel, 289-90, 316-17 ; in Eng- 
lish fiction, 341-2 



360 



INDEX. 



Remusat, J. P. A. de. See Two 
Cousins, The 

Renaud de Montauban, 115, 116, 
148, 155, 172 

Revival of learning ; influence on 
fiction, 1 6 1-2 ; on Italian litera- 
ture, 214-15 

Ribeiro, Bernardim, 249 ; eclogues, 
250-1 ; Menina e Moca, 251-5 ; 
sequel, 255, 256, 257, 259, 267 

Richardson, 5, 18, 19 

Rojas, Agostino de, 325 

Roland; Chanson de, 94, in, 112, 
115, 133, 148, 172 

Romance, The ; in France, 87-9, 
91, 92, 93, 94, 98, 118 ; in Portu- 
gal, 133, 134, 135 

Romances, Moorish and Spanish, 
124-5, 326, 328, 331 

Roman Comique. See Scarron 

Roman d'aventure, 7, 14, 56, 86, 87, 
91, 93, 94-8, 100, 123, 128, 134, 
145, 158, 162 

Romantic school, 19, 200 ; type of 
hero in Amadis, 152-3, 200 ; in 
Aminta, 230 ; sentimentality in 
Diana, 283 

Rome ; in the East, 30-1, 33 ; hatred 
of, in Amadis, 159 ; pastoral in, 
204 

Romulus and Remus, 159 

Rosalind. See Lodge 

Round Table, Knights of. See Ar- 
thur 

Rousseau, J. J., 18, 19, 200, 283 

Sacra Rappresentazione, The ; in- 
fluence on Poliziano, 224 

Sa de Miranda, Fr. de, 247 ; Story 
of the Mondego, 247-9, 2 59 

Saint-Pierre, B.de, 18, 77; Paul and 
Virginia, 200 

Sannazaro, 204 ; Arcadia, 216-22, 
229, 230, 231, 234, 237, 238, 243, 
(in Spain) 245, 246, 254, 260, 282, 
337 

San Pedro, Diego de. See Question 
de Amor 

San Pedro, H. de ; his Caballeria 
Celestial, 197-8 

Santillana, Marquis of, 240 

Sayavedra. See Marti 

Scarron, 325 



Scott, 19, 82, 284, 285, 326 

Scudery, Mile, de, 18, 383 ; Alma- 
hide, 331 

Selva de Adventuras. See Con- 
treras 

Semiramis, 26. See Nimrod 

Shakspere, 17 ; Reticles, 55 ; Mac- 
beth, 66 ; Cymbeline, 128 

Sidney, Sir Philip. See Arcadia 

Smollett, 18, 316 

Solatz, The, 254 

Sophists, The, 28, 29-30, 34, 46, 77 ; 
and Confucian novelists, 347-8 

Spectator, The, 19 

Spenser, 222 

Stendhal, 19 

Swift, Dean, 38 

Tasso, Bernardo, 171 

Tasso, Torquato, 18, 66-7 ; Aminta, 

226-30, 232-3, 234, 235, 282 
Texeda ; his sequel to Diana, 273 
Thackeray, 136, 285, 287, 322 
Theagenes and Chariclea. See Heli- 

odorus 
Theocritus, 71, 74 ; Idylls, 207, 208, 

229 
Theodorus Prodronlus, 79 
Thucydides, 69 
Tirante the White, 1 72-7, 197 
Tolstoi, 287 
Tristan and Iseult, Tristran, 6, 15, 

26, 90, 98, too, 107, 124, 125, 

126, 127, 133, 134, 147 
Truth for the Jealous. See Enciso 
Two Cousins, The, 347 
Two Educated Girls, The, 345-6, 

347 
Tyche, 28,38-40, 45, 65, 68, 69, 80, 
184, 189, 348 

Verne, J., 38 

Viaje Entretenido, The. See Rojas 
Villancico, The, 131-2, 261 
Villehardouin, 78 
Vincent, J., 192 
Violette, Roman de la, 128 
Virgil, 17, 71, 74, 76, 203, 204 ; 
eclogues, 206-7, 208, 210, 21 1, 
212, 214, 217, 218, 219, 220, 229 ; 
in Spain, 242, 243, 249, 256 
Vivien. See Lady of the Lake 



INDEX. 



Watteau, 200 

Werther. See Goethe 

William of Orange ; in French epic, 

163 
Woman ; influence of, on mediseval 

literature, 14 ; on Greek novel, 



361 

type of, 63 ; slurs 



16, 37, 42-5 

on, 183 
Xenophon, 69 
Xenophon of Ephesus, 52-4, 55 

Zegris, The. See Hita 



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THE HONORABLE PETER STIRLING. 

A Novel. By Paul Leicester Ford. 121110. $1.50. 

" A very good novel ... so strongly imagined and logically drawn that it satisfies 
the demand for the appearance of truth in art . . . telling scenes and incidents and 
descriptions of political organization, all of which are literal transcripts of life and fact — 
not dry irrelevancies. . . Mr. Ford is discreet and natural." — Nation. 

" Pages which read like actual history. . . A fine, tender love story. . . A very 
unusual, but. let us believe, a possible, character. . . Peter Stirling is a man's hero. 
. . . Very readable and enjoyable." — Literary World. 

TEN BRINK'S LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE. 

Translated by Julia Franklin. Contents : The Poet and the Man ; 
The Chronology of Shakespeare's Works ; Shakespeare as Dramatist, 
as Comic Poet, as Tragic Writer; Index to Works Mentioned. 
i2mo. 

KALIDASA'S SHAKUNTALA, OR THE RECOVERED 
RING. 

Translated by Professor A. H. Edgren of the University of Nebraska. 
121110, gilt top. $1.50. 

HEINE'S LIFE TOLD IN HIS OWN WORDS. 

Edited by Karpeles. Translated by Arthur Dexter. With por- 
trait. i2mo. $1.75. 

" On every page there is an illustration, worth reproduction, of the wit, the sentiment, 
and the romantic charm which flowed without an effort from the author's brain." — New 
York Tribune. 

THE DAYS OF LAMB AND COLERIDGE. 

An Historical Romance. By Alice E. Lord. i2mo. $1.25. 

" The relations of the two principal characters are traced from their schooldays to 
their death. . . The pathos and tenderness of Lamb 's life with his sister are well 
brought out, and the pages are brightened with touches of the humor and brilliant repartee 
characteristic of the great essayist." — Critic. 

JEROME K. JEROME'S NOVEL NOTES. 

Stories, tragic and comic. With 140 half-tone illustrations. i2mo. 

$1.25. 

" We have here Mr. Jerome at his best."— London Athenceum. 
" Many of them are extremely amusing." — Evening Post. 

SARAH BARNWELL ELLIOTT'S NOVELS. 

Uniform edition. !2mo, cloth. $1.25. 

JOHN PAGET. 

" A story very far above the ordinary." — Buffalo Commercial. 

" Is vivacious and humorous, and its scenes are evidently drawn from life." — The 
Ckurchtnan. 

JERRY: A STORY OF A WESTERN MINING TOWN. 

" Opens on a plane of deep emotional force, and never for a chapter does it sink 
below that level." — Life. 

THE FELMERES. 



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